Mech Frontier
by Rodhan
Summary: Ryuki's team has been banished to the icy planet Glacius as punishment for their use of a nuclear orbital bombardment. A mystery unravels around a secret excavation site. Is it a bug hunt? They will find out, with thunderous steel and iron fists.
1. Chapter 1

To all new readers, please provide some comments about what you liked or didn't like about the story, thank you.

Ryuki's team had been punished thoroughly. His final indiginity was a tour of duty at an outpost sitting three AU's from the closest source of warmth. They called it a research station. He felt it was a prison without the need for walls.

Captain Shiryu would have sworn up a swarm of curses if he weren't scattered around an alien forest light-years away. Ryuki just grumbled his acceptance of the situation. The team wasn't so magnanimous. Bary ,the least.

"Frakking hell, all of this! We stole an advanced reactor, so advanced that the Zeon forces would have ended the war if they didn't lose it. Now we're stuck on this icy rock because we called down a nuclear warhead by accident!" he yelled at the dust swept dead-lands. "You were the one who used the wrong code", someone said behind him. Another shrill screed escaped his mouth.

"No use getting angry now. We're here till they say we can leave. You can't be angry for that long without fragging someone. And if you do, I will send your ass down the deepest depths of this frozen wasteland. Understood?" Ryuki said. There mumbles ,sighs and one exceedingly loud yawn. "Good" he said.

The dropship that abandoned them had began to lift off, their last sight of civilization leaving with it. Their bags sat in a pile next to a Snow-Wolf tractor transport like a pile of garbage bags. It was Ryuki's chance to sigh.

Cold air mixed with their hot breath to leave long tendrils of mist as their Snow-Wolf labored towards the base. "What luck, no heating", someone grumbled. Ryuki tried to keep his mind focused on the sunken base to keep his mind off the slowly gnawing chill.

"This thing is moving about as fast as we were walking" Ross said. "If we go through anymore of those dunes , I cannot be held accountable for where my vomit ends up" Karin said. "Guys, save your energy" Ryuki said as he dozed off. Up and down the tractor went, the rhythm rocked like a hammock. The others continued to argue as Ryuki finally had a moment of deep sleep.

The tractor slowed to a stop. Snow banks formed around the tractor as a storm passed by overhead. The driver yelled and the crew scurried off. Wide doors slowly slid open to reveal a vast hangar and a team of harried troopers. The crew rushed towards the warm bowels of their new home before the HQ commander could greet them.

"Welcome to Recon Base Steelhelm , I suggest you salute before I welcome you to the brig" the commander said. Ryuki was first to stand to attention. "I am Colonel Tevat, the base commander", he said. Sloth-like movements from the others brought out the commanders' wrathful gaze. "Captain Shinkei Ryuki , your team was found to have acted disorderly in the field of battle and considered to have disobeyed orders. I will tell you this, you were not let off easy. Steelhelm is the the most remote installation in the known colonies. The winters here are colder than a witches teat. Be glad that you came here during the summer".

"On this base, everything is a a fight for survival. Should the installations HVAC systems malfunction, we could all freeze to death. Should you screw up out there, then you'll freeze to death too. Lots of things will get you frozen here. So its everyone's duty to get their jobs done fast and efficient. " he said.

"You will report for duty in the conference room A102 , in the sub-basement, this afternoon at 0300. Understood?", he asked rhetorically. A resonant 'Yes Sir' pleased his ears. "The staff sergeant will take you to your barracks. Until you report for duty, feel free to shower and eat.

"Man, this is going to be frakkin terrible two years. We should've just ate the bullet back then" Barry said. His morbid sensibilities led him to wistful reminiscence of a screaming shard of metal. "Barry, you're welcome to eat the bullet on your own time", Ryuki said. Led by a staff sergeant ,they trudged off to their quarters with heavy bags and their feet completely damp. Temperature shock began to set in ,the warm air mixing with their cold skin to make them sweat profusely. Some wished to go back out just to escape the sticky wet clothing.

Finally a sign of hope appeared in large black block letters. The laundry room was mercifully close to the barracks. Showers were just across from the laundry and the barracks were set up in a large T shaped corridor sitting between the two. "This barrack is currently unoccupied" the nameless sergeant said. "So make yourselves comfortable. The mess hall is down at the end of the end of the corridor and then to the right past the recreation hall". He saluted and they returned it haphazardly.

The remarkably clean room had white gleaming walls, recently washed and probably hand scrubbed. Ryuki wondered who lived here before and why they worked so hard to keep this place clean. "Well, this is refreshing" Reaper said. He usually stayed quiet, even on the Zeon hot drop mission. He wasn't so much afraid of anything, just didn't have much to say about anything. "Pick a bed ,doesn't really matter where. I don't think anyone else is going to be coming for a long time" Ryuki said. The well kept beds were decked out with crisp white sheets and fresh pillows. The bedside lockers were open to reveal almost a shining reflection. Definitely hand scrubbed, Ryuki thought. The foot lockers were immaculate, almost like vintage Terran furniture. The leather exterior was a shocking surprise. "These things are like ottomans, man. This is freaking me out" , Ross said.

"Whatever, better than using a mound of packed dirt as a desk and a tree stump as a chair", Barry said. Slowly they spread out through the room. Every other bed was taken, an unspoken agreement was made for personal space.

Unpacking was a simple exercise. After the court martial proceedings they were given thirty minutes to collect whatever items they could before being forced onto a long range cargo ship towards the dead planet Glacius. This amounted to a small assortment of underwear and socks and most of their guns. Reaper brought a long an infantry rail gun somehow. No one bothered asking why. There was nothing to shoot at anyway,other than snow drifts and ice. A change of uniform was provided , sitting neatly folded on their beds. One size fits all, unfortunately.

The mess hall was mostly empty. Soldiers were working cooking duty. A pair of them mulled about with a mop waiting for their shift to end. When they say Ryuki's squad walk through the heavy double doors, they sighed loud enough to hear from the other side of the hall.

The squad took a seat waiting for the "closed" sign to be turned over to open on the lunch counter. "Aint many people here, yeah?" Dizzy said. Normally she would have been worried about sitting with a crowd of people. Some kind of phobia she usually explained. Now, with no one in sight, it was a bit more disturbing than it was comforting to her.

"I got a bad feeling about the food" Wasp said while playing with a paper plane. Food didn't need to be much for Wasp to eat it. He would eat off the dirt if he felt like it. Doing exactly that is what got him kicked out of his previous squads.

The counter opened with only a single tray of food visible. Visibly it looked edible, though looking like a mass of grey goop. It smelled like paper mixed with glue. "What the frak is this?" Ross asked. "Mystery meat, sir" replied the impromptu chef. Ross muttered about life expectancies.

After filling up with "food" ,the squad headed to the conference room. The spacious rooms looked fitting for a war room, with a large white screen filling a stadium-style amphitheater. It looked each seat was supposed to have a computer but only network jacks belied the existence of the fabled PC's.

The commander walked in moments after Ryuki's squad entered. "On time, I see. Good. I expect you to be making up for all the bone-head deeds you have committed on the Jungle Station Zeta mission".

He took his seat at the head of the conference room. "This is a good start" he said.

The others soon began to feel the effects of eating mystery meat, making time seem to stretch out into infinity while waiting for the Colonel's orders. "The first round of business" he said coughing into his hand. "You will be integrated into a battle recon lance. A lance of Zephyrs have been brought in for your use. Now, your standing orders are to assist a research detachment. Provide support and security. This may seem strange but expect incursions by an unknown hostile force. They seem to only appear in twos but their frequency is irregular so no real pattern can be discerned from their movements".

The Colonel continued on. Ryuki stuck to the thought of unknown hostiles. They may be at the fringe of known space but to have an unidentified enemy was suspicious. "Sir" he interrupted. "When did the attacks start happening?" he asked.

"Roughly three months ago,two months after you were shipped here. The research detachment had been here six months prior. I suspect some kind of automated defense system is sending up these hostiles".

"Up, sir?" Karin asked.

"Up, as in up a dig site", the Colonel replied.

The team stayed silent for the entire briefing. Not one of them could keep the image of a dig site infested with aliens off their minds. Back at the barracks, the discussion turned strange. "Frakking aliens man" Barry and Ross said to each other. Completely unintelligible as it was but the sentiment was shared with everyone else.

Wasp spoke up."Is this a bug hunt?".

"Of course it isn't. We know something's out there. So its not a bug hunt", Ryuki replied. Of course not, he thought. Bug hunts ended with little of value happening. This definitely won't go down that easily.

"Slag, do you think the reason why there aren't too many troops here is because of those bogeys?" Karin asked.

"I don't know, the Colonel wasn't being too open about it" Ryuki replied. "Whatever, we'll be riding in Zephyrs. I even saw a Zhuk spider-tank and a Thunderhammer strider", Ryuki said. "Whatever's out there will be turned into a stain on the ice once we get through with them".

No amount of reassurances he gave could nudge from himself the subconscious image of the roiling unknown slowly devouring the world. What got into him? He's been through battlefields and war-torn asteroid belts. He's seen terrible things. But that thought, that niggling idea that he might face something that no battlefield could prepare him for, that unnerved him. There was no strategy that withstood the unknowable ,no defense against the inky darkness that enveloped foresight. He took his leave abruptly to find out as much as he could about his teams mission into the icy frontier.

Long quiet halls were interrupted by active research stations. The science labs were mostly automated,rattling with the constant movment of machines and robots. Articulated arms clanked back and forth on tracks with tools or debris softly grasped by claws and clamps. Across from the labs were small bubble portholes set into the riveted steel walls. Past the warping glass the constant swirling ice storm that griped the base in its chilled wisps. The gray clouds were low and fast against the packed ground.

It seemed the halls grew longer as he walked to the commanders office. Once he saw the plaque hanging from the door, he huffed in disapproval that it was nearly on the other side of the complex. Two knocks and impatient moments later the door swung open with a dour Colonel Tevat meeting him with bloodshot eyes. "As you can tell, Sergeant , I am a bit busy. I've got to file a lot of incident reports. You would be surprised how much can go on on a place this remote", he said ,trying to garner sympathy. "About those incidents, how many of them were due to the dig site, Sir?".

The colonel stood there with a blank look. "The crew before you had to be shipped off before you came in. They spent time in the dig site. You probably noticed the almost compulsive cleaning they did to your barracks. I was surprised they did that to every barracks in that wing. These were guys who weren't above living in filth and stench", the colonel said as he leaned against the door sill. "Whatever they did there ,they never said. The research teams don't really talk business with anyone", he said.

"I want to know how many people died there,sir", Ryuki focused his question. "Classified, Sergeant. Come back to me when you're a Lieutenant again", the colonel responded. The door closed silently.

"Sir, I want your authorization to take the Zhuk out with us. I have training on gun-carriers like that one", Ryuki broke the silence. Not a word returned to him. A sigh of frustration escaped from Ryuki. Marching back to the mess hall was as unnerving as ever. He didn't think he would ever get used to the utter quiet and stillness.

"Sir we've been waiting for you for awhile. Dizzy said to wait here so you wouldn't get lost if we left" Barry said. Sense of defeat tampered Ryuki's steely demeanor. "Very funny Barry, maybe when you're frozen dead , I'll piss out your eulogy in the snow", he said.

"Damn, Ryuki. That was a bit over the top man. Sorry if I offended you" Barry replied with tray in hand as he left the table. "Sir, something on your mind?" Ross asked. "This entire thing is bad news. The team before us turned freaky after their time at the dig. Something's not right about that place. And those researchers probably won't be of much help. By the way, anyone actually seen those researchers? Where the hell are they? I only saw automated labs when I was walking through the base", Ryuki said.

"No idea sir. Im hoping we get to take the spider tanks with us though. We aren't getting all the facts so we better prepare for the worse" , Karin replied. "Im working on it" Ryuki said back quickly. "Alright guys, I'm tired as hell. I suggest everyone get some sleep. No idea if there's anything to actually do here other than working and sleeping" he said in the midst of a long yawn.

Back at the barrack there was just as little to do as was surmised. A deck of cards and a chess board were all that they scrounged up before being exiled. There were only so many ways to play poker without any money. Chess was a slow and methodical game, something that would have exacerbated the worn crew. "Guys, just go to sleep. I can see you not having fun , just give it a break. We got a mission tomorrow anyway. We're gonna be briefed early in the morning for it. So sleep".

Sleep came in fits and bursts. No one was tired enough to sleep but too tired for anything else. Night never came. Alarm clocks went off but they weren't needed, everyone had already begun to dress for the briefing. The same conference room was as they left it.

"I will keep this short. You are to patrol the perimeter of the dig site. Do not go into the site, there is currently heavy construction going on. Do not fire until you are fired upon. Do not try to interact with the dig crew. Once the perimeter is sufficiently secured, you will use the constructor bots to build an outpost there. That will be your guard post and it will be staffed 'round the clock".

A few coughs and a sneeze but not a single word rose from the team. What was there to ask that hasn't already been asked? Ryuki knew it didn't matter, no answers were forthcoming. "Finally, you will be taking the Zhuk and a detachment of auto-drones with you. Once the Zhuk is there you may transport three striders to the outpost to be used for defense".

Strange, Ryuki thought. Why so much fire power? "Sir, is the dig site nearly excavated?" he asked. "You will be providing security for the retrieval teams" , the colonel said. Quite the roundabout way to say something simple, Ryuki thought.

"Alright, head to the hangar, the quartermaster will be there to do the fittings" the colonel said.

At the hangar, a large table was prepared with all manners of weapons. "These are for emergency only. Do not use them for games to pass the time away, understood?", the captain at arms said. A meek "Yes Sir" was the response.

The Zephyrs stood in their gantry alcoves. Missiles, rockets, cannons and guns were loaded into cranes and mech-loaders. It was a satisfying sight to Ryuki. The Zhuk was readying too in its holding chamber. Even more arms were loaded, enough to topple a frontier colony. "I got a weird feeling about this" Dizzy said as they watched the robots flit around with ammunition and armor plates. "Something big is about to happen" Ross replied. "Maybe some aliens are gonna crawl out of there. Xenos, man, frakkin bugs", Reaper said.

"Don't be ridiculous. Theres over a hundred colonized planets and not a single one of them had a sentient species on it. The likelihood that we would find something out here is nearly zero. This place is a desert, a dead planet. Nothing lives here" Barry said.

"Right, Ryuki? This ain't a bug hunt thats for sure".

Ryuki wondered what the truth was.


	2. Chapter 2

Repairs were needed for the mechs. Sparks from welding torches bounced off the floor while cranes and gurneys zigzagged above. A few of the Zephyrs had extensive interior refits. Apparently they were shipped with an older flight suite , making them only half as effective. Oddly,there were only four of the necessary seven to fill out the squadron.

"Colonel, where are the rest of the mechs? Theres three Zephyrs missing" , Ryuki asked Tevat as he observed the repairs. "Mission killed", he replied.

"Sir, if they're mission killed why arent they being repaired?". He had seen units that were MK'd and they would usually be repaired when the salvage crawlers picked them up. Only when they were deep in enemy territory would they be left behind. "Whats left of them is deep in the dig site. No point trying to haul them back up. If ya find em ,make sure they've been destroyed" ,the colonel replied.

Ryuki sighed. The colonel seemed to be on his last legs. Disinterest was probably the last stage till full on withdrawal. And when that happens, the base will be in chaos. Well it would be, Ryuki thought, if there were more than a handful of people. It seemed if the food and booze kept coming, no one would care one bit. Unluckily for him and his team,they would be out in the middle of an ever-raging snow storm in a cold and remote outpost.

"Sir, we'll be taking the Thunderhammer along with us" Ryuki asked. A terse "sure" was the only response.

The snow-storm howled outside louder than the machinery bolting and welding inside. Water dripped off the sides of the slanted facade ,freezing swiftly into channels of ice. The hot air, pumped through vents, turned to a heavy mist as it condensed on contact with the outside. Wafting plumes of thick water vapor scurried along the hard packed snow , snaking between ice dunes and snow drifts. Isolated. It was all on a separate plane, Ryuki thought. No life, no movement save for the shifting white snakes.

The entire planet felt like a trap. There was no place to fall back on. If the base went cold, that was it. A slow freezing death as the sleet slowly layered on top of you. An ice coffin buried under solid permafrost. He kept asking, why. Why is a base here, why are their heavy mechs here? Why even bother being here when forgetting to charge you batteries meant turn into a human popsicle?

Growling storm overwhelmed whatever sounds the mechs would make. Static was all he could hear from inside the pilots nest. Winds pushed and pulled on every part of the machine. Each step was a precarious fight against nature.

"There's maybe fifty meters of visibility out here, thats an optimistic estimate" Barry said over the comm. Swirling tendrils of ice obscured even the basic shapes of the mechs. They had to walk single file, even going so far as having each place its hand on the shoulder of the mech in front of them, just to keep from seperating.

"Radar is all frakked up man. Radio is fugged too" Ross said. "Thank Jebus that we have point to point comms still working". The laser comms were set to their highest power available. Close proximity to each other meant it would only sound like a radio sitting at the bottom of an ocean.

"Do not lose contact with Dizzy. She needs to have constant comms with us. Remember, if we lose the Thunderhammer, we lost half our fighting ability. We don't want those xenos or whatever to tear us apart because we're stupid enough to get lost out here" Ryuki said.

Shrill wails interspersed the baying winds of the storm. "Thats em, either the guys who died out here or whatever killed em" Dizzy said. Wasp yelled incoherently in the background while Reaper exclaimed "Game over!". It was probably not the best idea to have all three of them in the same machine.

"Calm down, we haven't even seen anything", Ryuki said.

The Thunderhammer was stripped of its weapons except for a few under-slung machine gun cluster turrets. A large sled was hitched to its hind , carrying the automatic construction drones and the modular outpost. Its flaw though was its speed. Slow as a moving glacier , compared to the Zephyrs. Under normal circumstances, it was basically an arsenal landship. Today ,though, it was our mule.

"How's the Lidar ? We still have contact laser relay comms with Dizzy's team?" Ryuki asked. Ross queried the computers, running diagnostics and checking missed alerts. "We're good sir, Dizzy is still going on about UFO's though" , he replied. "Do you want me to relay their gibberish to you sir?".

"No no, no" Ryuki said emphatically.

Inertial guidance was the only method for navigation. The lack of satellites and preponderance of intense interference made any other method nigh useless. Ryuki tapped his nav screen, a force of habit he usually explained. He thumbed through the many displays and readouts till the map pulled up. The lidar showed all five units in a nearly straight line heading towards the dig site. Slowly they approached the recon point.

"So its settled right, north will be towards the dig site from HQ?" Wasp asked. "Might as well be, no one ever told us which directions the poles were", Barry replied.

The trek was a slog through deep snow and rock ice. Footprints soon turned back into a blank white as the snow landed thick on the ground. Inside their suits, the tendrils of cold permeated through the miniscule spaces between the armor plates. Body perspiration became sticky and damp . A few choice words slipped through Barry's ever running mouth.

Visibility had effectively disappeared inside the storm. The sky and the ground looked the same. Only ground penetrating radar kept them from blindly falling off the edge of a cliff. Ryuki took a long drink from his water bota, a souvenir from his few visits back to Earth.

He glanced at the nav display. A few more kilometers to the waypoint. The construction equipment would be released to do their thing while the rest of them would secure the perimeter. In this weather, the perimeter may as well stretch around the equator. Ryuki sighed , his mind too exhausted to say anything inspirational.

The Zephyrs were in their element. The harsh environment and near isolation made their NBC systems even more useful. Though designed for nuclear and biochem warfare , the life-support system was unperturbed . Whether in deep space or deep in snow, the Zephyr would function as it always did. They seemed to be impenetrable walls between life and death. The cold though ,that was a problem.

Slush formed under their metal feet. It seemed as if the snow was liquefying. A low rumble echoed through their pilots' nests. Now they slowed their pace, unsure of what was happening under their feet. "Earthquake!" Barry yelled. The one-way laser relay kept his high pitched voice from propagating through the communication lines.

He was right though partially. The ground was moving, now stronger than before. Snow shifted around them like quicksand but the rumbling ended before they sank completely. Ryuki in the lead unit began to dig up out then pulling the others up. The spider-tank had an easier time, using its extra legs to push itself back onto the surface.

"This is getting worse by the minute" Barry complained again. "We better get that recon post on stilts or something" he said.

"Dont worry, the foundation will be wide enough to keep itself from sinking. At worst we'll just have to learn how to build snow shoes for our mechs" , Karin said back down the relay.

The storm cleared enough to show the outlines of a large structure in the distance. It was a tower sitting on top of a slopped alcove dug into the snow. Solid metal gates blocked the entrance that seemed to extend deep underground. Behind it though was a jagged crag of ice and rock, nearly as large as the headquarters they had trekked from. "There it is, the dig site, which means we're near about the recon waypoint. Wasp, head to the waypoint, Barry you're going with them. Karin, Ross, you two come with me. Everyone update your maps", Ryuki called out. "Do not get frakkin lost. I will not come looking for you" he said moments later.

A break in the clouds brought a sickly brightness to the surroundings. Light reflected off the ground to give it a pale glow. The muffled steps of the Zephyrs pounded the path around the dig site. Karin noted the structure as they passed it. "Looks like a giant elevator shaft. They might be deep underground", Karin said.

Ryuki understood that under the kilometer thick snow was the rocky surface of Glacius The giant elevator bored through the solid surface, like a worm working its way through the core of an apple. Strange though that the entrance was left unguarded.

As the moved about, they planted motion beacons into the ground. The large strobing light swept with a pale glow while its long thin antenna suffered under the strong winds. Anything that passed overland would set off the beacons.

Marching around the site revealed little. Their patrol was little more than a formality. Shrubs and tiny furry animals were as dangerous to them as a hot water poured onto their mechs. Fatigue set in all of them. Journeying to the site had sapped their patience and the nearly blank terrain left them with little to their imagination.

Construction drones scurried along the sided of the tank. Its cannon had been replaced with a construction crane, which slowly placed foundations and girders for the drones to bolt and weld together. Most of the building was already pre-constructed , leaving the tank crew with the simple job of moving and placing the pieces. It began to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and soon enough the outpost turned from a skeleton to drab blocky outcropping in the snow.

Wasp, Reaper and Dizzy sat idly as the automated system whirred. The clicking sound of nuclear hardened CRT monitors and the the wheezing of the HVAC system were all they could hear inside the armored bridge of the Thunderhammer.

As uneventful as it seemed, tense feelings were abound. Communications were nonexistent. Visual confirmation was all but impossible. It was abject isolation, buried inside a pocket world where this was all that was. Civilization was just a glimmering shaft of light that died between the folds of the clouds.

The patrol was approaching the outpost. Sweat and frustration had built up and the sight of a box only big enough for a few people to live in was a sign of salvation to them. A radio array and laser antenna sat atop the roof, next to the air-conditioning block. A pair of large power cables snaked from the back of the Thunderhammer into the side of the building. The Thunderhammer lay on its belly while Barry's Zephyr knelt in front of the entrance. They too would need to struggle down their mechs without the help of gantry's or catwalks.

The entrance was a simple sliding door that lead into an airlock. To prevent temperature shock, the team had to spend a few minutes in it to adjust to the warmth gradually. When their time was up they appeared on the other side, holding sweaty clothing and the occasional sneeze. "Welcome home guys" Dizzy said with derision

The bare metal double bunks sat at one end of the large unsegmented room. On the other side were banks of monitors and computers, quietly recording everything. The locker modules were spacious, almost big enough to fit oneself into, but they brought little to fill them. In the middle, a single round table with chairs neatly rolled underneath.

Steam wafted into the main area from the only two showers inside the bunker. Even indoors with heat controls set as high as possible, the temperature still felt uncomfortably low. Ryuki's patrol team went first, their bodies in much need of refreshing water.

Dizzy and her team sat around the round table with a deck of cards lazily strewn across it. A game of poker quickly degraded into a near fist fight. It took only a few hours for them to become uncomfortable in each others presence.

The computer displays showed aerial radar scans and ground penetrating ultrasound images. The weather had damped the radio tower though, making radar difficult to use and communications even more so. Ryuki sat in front of them panels and controls, switching from one infoscreen to the next. Green lines raced along the screen with iridescent squares and circles popping up along their paths. Those were the seismic readings, which so far had proved innocuous.

But Ryuki was still uneasy. The remote isolation was disconcerting and the lack of contact with the science team was suspicious. The great elevator shaft they had seen seemed a bit too old to have been constructed alongside the base and the ice crag was a sore thumb in the midst of uniformly white terrain.

Time was difficult to tell. Not a break in the clouds could be seen and the darkness that permeated the air stayed unchanged. A clock showed it was nearing 6 PM , Earth standard time, though Earth time was useless on a planet where the sun never really rose.

Sleep was much appreciated by Ryuki and his team. A day that seemed to stretch into the horizon had sapped much of their determination and will, leaving them tired husks in search of quiet solace. The whistling winds seemed soothing by the time they headed for bed. White noise was what it was. Everything else was silenced by it, aside from latent tinitus that years of battlefield experience brought.

Those sensor beacons never noticed what was going on under them. Slight ,long tremors reverberated through the night. Impalpable yet even more dangerous than outright hostility. Beacons meant for solid ground sank into the ground. To the more attentive soldier, the change would have been stark. But fatigue makes one's mental clarity sluggish, blurring situational awareness.

The morning patrol circled around , following the flashing lights they had left behind the day before. Around they went, with little attention to their surroundings. A bit more of the dull gray elevator shaft was revealed . The icy skin of the crag didnt completely sheath the rocky surface like it did the day before. Little details that would have fallen into the crevices of faulty memory remained like spiky thorns in Ryuki's mind.

"Something's up, that rock is bigger than it was yesterday. The gate into the elevator shaft was left closed but its a little ajar" Ryuki said. Dizzy ,in Karin's place, spouted incoherent. Once her words strung together intelligibly , the thought still sounded inscrutable. "I knew it, that earthquake was them! It was them! They got into the dig site, we gotta go in there!" she yelled.

"Calm down, lets stay calm ok? We'll have to investigate but we'll have to be careful. Comms are still screwed up so if we go in we'll be going in blind. We're heading back to base to load up on gear" he said.

The outpost was slowly being buried under a snow drift when they came back. Snow mounds piled up around the Thunderhammer's legs and forming ice shards running down its back. No, they weren't being buried, they sunk, Ryuki thought. That earthquake the day before made the ground loose. Dumb dumb mistake, Ryuki muttered. He was unprepared and shocked at the extent of the descent.

He rushed into the bunker, covered in frost and cold sweat. "Get the Hammer up , cable up the outpost and pull it out of the snow" he said quickly. "Karin, get a thick gage coax cable ready, it needs to be a few kilometers long. There should be one on the Hammer", he said slower. His mind was rushing now, trying to figure out all the contingencies. How does one prepare for the unknown anyway?

Not enough was given to explain to them what was happening. They were tense and confused, but did what was ordered of them. Dizzy got back into the Thunderhammer with Wasp at the crane controls. Barry and Ross strung together high-tension cables onto the crane with the Zephyrs, using the boosters gingerly to speed up the process.

The coax cable sat on a giant spool. It wasn't thick enough for Ryuki but there were no other alternatives. Communications would be tough, with the thick crust blocking most radio signals. A deep sense of isolation dawned on Ryuki. A thin cable would be all that connected him to the surface. Limited batteries and fuel meant that if the worst would to happen, they would be completely defenseless.

A chill went up his spine. Perhaps it was the sweat flash freezing. Or it was the sense of dread.

Rocket pods were filled and magazines loaded. Jury rigged missile racks were strapped to the Zephyr legs, with even more rifles stored on chest mounted rails. Shields mounted to the shoulders, guns mounted to the hips. There was not meter of their machines not covered in weapons. Special night-ops optical visors were loaded onto the heads, with green and red spheres jutting out like smooth insect eyes. Extra tanks of fuel were slotted into the knee guards , just enough to sate Ryuki's paranoia.

With the Hammer struggling to pull the outpost out of the sinking snow and slush at their backs, Ryuki took Ross and Barry to the entrance of the dig site.

The gate had to be pulled open. Its motors had frozen over due to exposure. Frost had spread inside, like moss. Lights failed and flickered, leaving them to use their flood lights. Down a short ramp was the open platform of the elevator. Giant exposed gears sat atop of a sharp declining rail. The emergency lights strobed in the low light, revealing the faint light of the control panel.

Walking onto the platform activated its controls, allowing Ryuki to remotely activate it. The gears screeched against the rail before the platform jerked into motion. Slowly they descended, with the light dying above them and only the eerie shadows cast by their flood lights accompanied them down.


	3. Chapter 3

The thick,inky darkness was viscous. Light faded into it, leaving this world and into the unknown. Flood lights only lit up the immediate area, leaving the rest hidden and shrouded. Cranking gears and whining motors broke the silence, a rhythm of impending destruction. Rolling and rolling, the platform continued. Its wheels,probably worn from carrying heavy vehicles , seem to slip at times. Jostling to keep their balance left their nerves frayed, leaving themselves open for the dark tendrils of fear to bore deep into their minds. Their only link to salvation was a cable that could have been easily cut.

Inside their flight suits there were signs of doubt. Sweaty palms, sticky backs and drips of sweat down their foreheads. It wasn't hot at all, there was cool air recycled from the outside to flush the heat out. No, it was psychosomatic. It was the waiting, that stretch of time where nothing happened aside from what was playing through their thoughts. Alone with their thoughts, traveling down to what may be Hell itself, it was a situation that most would have not had. Ryuki wondered if this is what psychological torture felt like, being trapped inside sensory deprivation chambers, slowly being subsumed into the void.

He needed to speak, say anything. Listening to the chirps of his control panel was slowly driving him insane. "Weapons check, everyone. Make sure everything is loaded. Might as well switch the Master Arm on, who knows what we'll find down there" he said, not realizing the slight low crackle in his voice, a sign of nervousness. Ross and Barry chirped over the local area radio. Everythings ready. The wonders of wireless interfaces allowed them to hook up more weapons than they had hardpoints for. Leg mounted disposable rocket launchers were beaming their control feedback signals through thick metal plating, with little more than metal prongs to form the comm bridge.

"Sir" Ross began, "We got enough weapons to send islands back to the deep sea, I think we'll be alright". He noticed too, Ryuki's apprehension. Barry though seemed completely enamored with his load out. "Sir, we got particle rifles, autocannons, grenades , missiles, mortars, sticks, sharp knives , we are rocking this mission" he said with a laugh. Through their positive talk though, there was just as every bit of apprehension as Ryuki felt. Bluster could only hide superficial sentiments.

"Alright, lets keep the comms free and open , call in if you spot anything, anything at all" Ryuki replied. Over his voice was the sound of metal clamps locking , others disengaging and the whirring motors grinding away. A sudden jerk shot up through their armored legs and the platform lurched into a different direction.

They were level now, the platform moving forward instead of downward. Ahead of them were yellow caution lights , strobing in the thick darkness. Their light barely illuminated the walls they hung next to. Barry looked over the side to see nothing but emptiness. His fear of heights got the best of him , his eyes shooting upward at the flashing buttons to keep his mind off the void underneath them.

"Looks like a blast door up ahead" Ryuki said. The massive door sat at the end of the tunnel, with a small control panel extending from the wall. The platform finally stopped . Ross walked his mech over to the panel. Its arm flinched and out of it a smaller arm extended. While the hands were able to manipulate object deftly, they were too big to interact with human sized controls. The extending arm was built into the fore-armor , with three flat finger attached to a thin rod of a palm. A few taps later, the gate rasped as it slid upward.

The gate opened to a small dome with equipment haphazardly strewn. Rows of computers, still powered , sat waiting in sleep. Tools and benches sat around a raised platform, with low hanging lights arrayed over trussed beams. Work had been going on quite recently. Oscilloscopes were readied for some sort of test, while the bench on the other side of the platform had some kind of debris on it.

Signs pointed to life, yet not a single trace of the research team was found. No labcoats on coat racks, no food, nothing. "Well isn't this a welcoming sight. Looks like this entire operation is borked sir, nobody here", Barry said.

"Look, people were working here. Theres computers on, electronics buzzin away. They were here. So we have to go find them" Ryuki replied. "I don't..." Barry said before he was cut off. "Alright set up the co-ax with the communication booster. We'll need to be able to communicate especially if the circuits down here are fried". With that ,Ross worked swiftly to set up the equipment.

Surveying the room showed no other signs of activity. Everything seemed to have frozen in time with only the people missing, like some kind of art project or photograph. The hollow walls rang as they moved about in their machines.

They continued onward into the complex, looking for any evidence of what transpired. The dome had three hatches and one freight tunnel. The freight tunnel led towards the residential space. It was a tight fit for their mechs. One twitch of a finger would have rammed them into the walls. Again, only caution lights. "It looks like they just recovered from an outage in some parts of the complex. The labs were lit up, probably from an independent generator, but everywhere else its just these yellow strobes. Nobody got to the power room to switch things back on" Ryuki said over the comm.

The tunnel ended with another blast gate. Controls were still functioning, just like everything else in the labs. A gust of air blew out from under the gate. Who would have sealed this part of the base shut like that, Ryuki wondered.

Flickering shadows followed behind their mechs as they walked towards the storage area , opposite of the residences. They would need to dismount to go any further. Flashlights were clipped to chest harnesses along with a long knife, for emergencies. "Lock down your mechs, don't want any hysterical civvies getting in. Safeties on till I say so", Ryuki said into his radio,outside his machine.

Their soft footsteps broke the eerie quiet of the seemingly abandoned residence halls. Some doors were ajar , as if hastily closed or opened. The rooms were lived in, with beds still unmade and chairs pulled out. Closets full of clothing just waiting for someone to peruse through them. "Not a single frakkin person" Barry whispered. "Something frakked up happened here" he said with the crackle of fear in his voice. "I think we're going to want to call in some back up sir", Ross said while surveying the lifeless living quarters.

"We need to contact HQ immediately. Ross send a message out , have them tell HQ that the research team is missing , no signs of violence. Tell em we're requesting a team to come down here to cordon off the area. I want the response sent back immediately" Ryuki ordered.

Ross's mech came back to life , its thunderous steps leaving them shaken. "Alright Barry, hope you don't need a change of underwear", Ryuki said. Ryuki immediately called into Ross's mech to tell him of his plan.

"Wait, why?"

"We're heading down to the service tunnels, towards the reactor. If that thing is still running then we're going to have to shut it down. To be safe, yeah?" Ryuki replied. Barry took a gulp of water from his canteen a bit too fast and could only respond with a harsh cough.

At the end of the hallway was a map and the hatch. Ryuki took time to photograph the map,since it seemed the infonet was offline. The hatch conveniently lead down into the service tunnels which would lead them to the reactor vessel. "Ryu, I didn't bring any potassium iodide pills with me" Barry said. "Come on, the reactor is stable, nothing's going to happen to you".

The tube was dark, with only minimal light from light pipes to illuminate their climb down. Dripping water echoed through the many junctions they passed on their way to the main level. Furtive glances lead to nagging suspicions of what else was down there with them.

At the bottom they found absolute darkness. None of the light switches worked and the emergency strobes were non-functioning. Suit lights only illuminated a short distance ahead of them, further heightening what dread they had built up from their active imaginations.

"Ok, lets use our NV glasses" Barry whispered. Both of them pulled out hard black cases with flip tops, inside of which were sets of un-powered night vision glasses. Their ergodynamic designs made a tight fit , creating a nearly 170 degree viewing angle. Harsh glare from the flashlights subsided when they switched to black-light sticks.

At every corner they felt an oppressive feeling. A heavy weight seemed to be placed on their heads at the bottom of their lungs. It could have been the air conditioning malfunctioning but it was still harrowing to feel some kind of presence pressing down on them. No amount of training could wipe away life-times of horror stories and superstitions.

"Man, lets get on with this, I feel like Im gonna suffocate down here" Barry said during a short break for water and snacks. "Suck it up , you've been underground before. You got your mech blown to bits by a freakin' NEXT suit , thats gotta be scarier than anything we've seen so far", Ryuki replied. "Yeah but a NEXT you can kill, but ghosts or xenos or whatever could be down here" Barry said back. "Alright, so you want to let this reactor go on without any supervision, so that something much worse could happen? You need a stim or something to get your testicles to drop?" Ryuki said.

He regretted the comment the moment he said it. There was nothing wrong with being scared. Ryuki was just as scared as Barry was. False bravado was his only recourse. Now Barry felt resentment, something to avoid when your life depends on another. For once , Ryuki felt the need to apologize. "Hey , ah I didnt mean that. Im scared like you man. This entire thing seems frakked to hell. We just need to keep our wits or we'll get ourselves killed , you understand?" Barry's fluorescent outline nodded quietly.

All was quiet from that point on. No creaking floors or wheezing support beams. No dripping water or slow air leaks. Apart from the lack of light, the entire place was well maintained. Still, the well kept exterior had hidden secrets. Was it paranoia, though, that made Ryuki believe that? He wondered too, if this was all just a misunderstanding. Maybe there was some kind of emergency meeting off base. They were so busy the forgot to tell the outpost about it. Incredulous. No, this definitely looked messed up , Ryuki thought.

A panel with light bursting from its corners. This must be it, Ryuki thought. "Ok, check for markings. Lets make sure this is the entrance to the reactor and not something like the compactor or whatever" he whispered. A short search later revealed the panel was an emergency hatch into the control room. Some tugs at the tight locking wheel forced a click from the door. It swung open to reveal a fully light, fully functioning control room.

"Well this is much better than I expected" Barry chirped. The reactor was marvel of engineering, outlasting its caretakers. Everything was in the green as far as Ryuki could tell. The fuel pellet was nearly used up though, which meant the reactor would have shut down eventually without their help. "Go flip those switches, we need to turn over to geothermal and battery power. Maybe that'll fix the lights, yeah?" Ryuki said.

His limited knowledge of nuclear physics was enough to figure out where the system stop button was. Thanks to the aggressive safety protocols, everything was built to be used by the least likely people. If scientists or engineers were unavailable (or dead) , it would have fallen on the soldier to take over. Simplicity was the most important requirement especially with power plants.

There, under a heavy glass cover ,was the red button with STOP printed in large bold white letters under it. Barry gave the OK sign , so Ryuki pressed down the big shiny button. The lights flickered a bit then came back on as the reactor slowly wound down.

"Hey Ryu, something doesnt seem right. We're getting excess power draw from something. It defintely aint the complex though, none of the modules show it". Another problem. Once trouble starts ,there's always more to follow.

"Anything you can tell me about this phantom power usage?" Ryuki asked Barry at the plant diagnostics console. A large map began to project onto the wall, with green orbs marking power usage. A yellow warning light appeared at the edge of the map with the words "Unknown Current Drop" underneath it.

"I can tell you its steady. No spikes or drops. Something is deliberately siphoning power, Ryu. The batteries won't last for more than a day. If we let it run off the geothermal plant, we'll have to shut whatever it is down, or the rest of the complex goes unpowered. If I was a betting man, which my multiple tours of duty suggests, I would say this is what caused the complex to experience intermittent power and outages. Its just drawing too much juice, Ryu".

"Alright, we're heading back up. We need to report this in" he said.

Dust and small debris dislodged from the ceiling as Ross traversed back to the main chamber. The complex seemed older than it should have been, he thought. How could something this deep underground have been built only recently, he wondered. A few small details caught his eye like steel beams with tell tale signs of rust and corrosion. Some walls ,immaculately painted, with chips coming off. He began to question the HQ's age too. It was huge, big enough to house an entire expeditionary force. But it was empty. The gear seemed relatively new, except for the octo-walkers. The Thunderhammer was an older , pre-war design. Built prior to the clan war , before the production of the NEXT suits. It was a lumbering behemoth, slow and about as responsive as a rock. The Zhuk was only newer by a few years, still decades old by now. The Zephyrs were already used, it looked like. There were some audio logs stored, nothing particularly interesting. All of it lead to a question, how long have they been here?

None of them knew that there was a research base here , with only a few of them knowing that there was a recon post on this iceball. Secret research, conducted on a frozen planet at the fringe of known space. It was like a bad movie, Ross thought.

The communication hub was still there, to his relief. He hopped out and began to call up the outpost. "This is Recon Team , do you copy Outpost Team?" he said into the big microphone. He pressed one headphone to his ear, while splitting his attention between the radio and his surroundings. "This is Outpost, any news?" he heard Karin reply.

"We need a support team ASAP. You need to contact HQ and tell em that the research team is missing and the power is out", he replied. A few curses later , she replied "Alright, stay on the line, Im gonna use the big radio antenna, gimme a few minutes".

Time passed by awfully slow. Too long, Ross thought. Maybe the weather was bad , thought it had been mostly clear when they left. Only a few hours since last they were outside. It couldn't have changed that dramatically to affect a giant radio antenna.

"We got problems, Ross" was what he heard back . "We can't raise anyone at HQ. We can't even get any automated responses from the board. Nothing. Everything's dead , its like the base isn't there anymore", she said with a tinge of fear.

"Ok, get Dizzy and uh Wasp into your Zephyr, get em to the base. The weather?" he asked. "Clear enough to see the binary stars. Thats what made me worried. No interference at all so why can't I get anyone online?" she said, now with more

"Give Dizzy the boost pack and get her flying back there. I'll tell Ryu what's up. If anyone comes knocking, make sure to have a gun ready" Ross said before ending his call.

Ryuki and Barry reached the top of the stairs. The lights were still intermittent but the switchover seemed seamless. They climbed back into their machines and headed back to the main chamber , where Ross was waiting.

The moment he saw them, Ross began yelling. "Big problem sir, no one's answering at HQ. Dizzy was sent out with Wasp in the Zephyr. Don't know what else to do sir" Ross finished. Like a faucet opening, the steady drip of misfortune turned to a trickle, Ryuki thought. There would be more problems, more dangerous ones. All his training was against humans, but he wondered if that was any use against fighting things he doesn't even know exist. He walked over to the comm hub and picked up the microphone."This is Recon Leader to Outpost Team", he said. Karin acknowledged. "Everyone get armed, start setting up the Zhuk with weapons. Uncrate the flamethrowers. Get em on everything. Prepare for combat , people".


	4. Chapter 4

"So Diz, what the hell is going on?" Wasp asked. "The hell do I know!" Dizzy replied. This was all just too strange. A work site that's evacuated as if people just got up and walked away, like they were going home. An HQ that is dead silent. On a planet that seems to be one giant snowball. What could either of them know.

"I don't understand a thing thats going on ,Wasp. But this is something serious. Really serious. Super serious, right." Dizzy said. Her eyes strained against the intensely bright light reflected from the permafrost.. "Stupid ice, I should have brought some sunglasses or something". Wasp flipped a switch , the windows polarized. "You could have told me about that" Dizzy said.

With no storm to impede them, the trek lasted shorter than expected. The huge dish antenna atop the base slowly revealed itself above a snow dune. Something was wrong. The dish was blasted, panels missing and whole chunks scattered. "Ah slag" was all Dizzy could muster.

Wasp called in , every channel she knew. Nothing. Not even static. "Its like everything's been shutdown. Maybe its spring cleaning?" she said. "Yeah, thats why the shuttles disappeared too?". Wasp quickly twisted to see the landing pad. They were all gone. "What the frakking hell?" she yelled out.

Dizzy used the last of the fuel in the boosters to jump over the dunes. Her mech went down skiing towards the base, its tracked heels at full throttle to push it even faster. The snow compressed under its feet, a thin layer of water formed. Its feet became skates, but its weight was too much to handle. "Hey hey hey!" Wasp yelled. The mech teetered to the right, its weapon racks drawing it to the ground.

Dizzy jettisoned the shoulder missile pods. Still not enough. She tossed the rifles, box ammunition, the magnetic mines. It was still tilting. She thrusted the arm controls forward then back. A long blade popped out from the right arm. A pull of another switch detonated the clamps that held it to the arm.  
>"Ah always that stupid sword" , Wasp commented.<p>

Now balanced, they quickly arrived at the base. Loading mechs were out on the tarmac, left behind by the fleeing base staff. They had the courtesy of locking up after they left though. "Well, Im hoping this means they're coming back." Dizzy said. "Or maybe they wanted to keep someone out" Wasp replied.

The loading bay doors were unresponsive. Even the override codes were failing. They were locked out on purpose. "Well , what the hell" Wasp said. "Alright, we're gonna do something a bit different. She told Wasp to bring a loader to the door. With two mechs, it would be easier to lift the door.

The loading mech's clawed hands dug into the door, perforating it. Dizzy's Zephyr grasped hold of metal handles at the bottom of the door. "On three we lift" she said over the radio. One Two Three. They both lifted. The door resisted. Another count to three. They lifted , pulling their arm controls as hard as possible. Actuators groaned and the door screeched. Something broke when the door launched upward. The loader was totaled, its arms torn off its sockets. "You ok in there?" Dizzy radioed.

"Yeah , yeah. Im fine" an annoyed Wasp responded back. They marched inside to find the loading bay completely cleaned. "Looks like they put everything back in place? I don't think anythings missing" Dizzy noted. The tractors were parked inside a shed , the ammo containers piled up at the other end of the bay. "Why wouldn't they take any of this stuff?" Wasp's voice echoed in the desolate building.

"Lets just get the gear and get the hell out" Dizzy said.

"Alright, record everything the sensors pick up. I'll be keeping a voice log" Ryuki said. The flamethrowers were arrayed one on the shoulder and one in each arm. "Why flamers though?" Ross said. "For the frakking xenos , man." Barry replied.

Missiles, guns, autorifles and cannons. Not a single weapon was left. "These guys are gonna sink through the snow with all this gear" Barry said. "We still have the sled so we'll use that" Ryuki said with a finger pointed to the Thunderhammer. "Alright guys, one more check. Make sure you take some food with you, I don't know how long we'll be down there". Ryuki said.

The radio chirped. The base was empty. The comm antenna blown to bits. No one around and the shuttles were gone. They were already halfway back to the recon post by the time she called in. Some very bad news , Ryuki noted. How would the others handle it. They were officially stranded on the planet until the next supply ship arrived, if one was scheduled at all.

No time to lie , he thought. They were in a bad situation and the only way out was to make sure everyone knew as much as possible. He called everyone together inside the recon post. Whatever speech he could think of would have fallen flat on their ears once they heard what happened at the base. "Alright guys, here is the blunt truth. HQ is deserted, the ships have disappeared off the landing zone. The radio antenna is busted. We are stuck here for the time being". He waited for a response. Only Barry said anything, mostly unintelligible cursing. "Alright then, in about two hours the Zhuk with the rest of our gear will get here. Load up essentials, this situation is probably going to get worse".

The Zhuk was one hour away. A storm was extending out from the horizon. Dark clouds swirled , bloated in the sky. It too was closing on them. Ryuki stood on top of the watch tower outside of the recon post. He scanned the horizon , noting the small silhouette of a spider approaching. Howling wind reached pushed him against the inner walls. Forceful gusts kept him unbalanced. Struggling to plant his feet firmly onto the floor he felt the floor and the walls sway. Though the winds were strong, the tower was low to the ground with a wide base made of thick concrete and steel. It couldn't be the wind making the tower to shake. It couldn't be. It wasn't strong enough. No, no something was happening under the tower.

"Any reports on the seismographs?" he called in. Barry answered , a bit surprised "this is the first time Im hearing that we've got a seismograph. Let me go check what it says". Barry found the computer screen showing various sensor read outs. Temperature, solar activity , infrared and many more sensor output, in a rainbow of colors and shapes. He tapped the screen to see the rest of the charts. Nothing unusual , he thought. Another tap, another screen appeared. The multicolored lines were jumbled against the black background. Lines folded on top of each other, stretching out then pulling back down. Plots turned fuzzy and indiscernible, a chaotic mosaic of sensor readings. . They oscillated wildly , turning into jagged peaks and troughs. He scanned the titles; ultrasonic ,magnetometer, gravimeter and finally the seismographic chart. It was slowly rising.

"Sir, the seismograph is showing activity is increasing, slowly increasing" Barry called back to Ryuki. What did it mean, Barry wondered and would Ryuki know any more then him? Maybe it was the Zhuk approaching. But the tremors were unnoticeable until the realization that they _were_ happening at that very moment.

Another call, this time from Dizzy. Twenty minutes out. Cracks appeared along the edges of the recon post and tower. Ryuki watched from above as one long crack traveled all the way to the dig site a kilometer away. This wasn't natural, Ryuki thought. Dizzy never said anything about tremors when she called in. New cracks formed, this time surrounding the giant crag , the loud cracking of ice followed.

"Everyone get ready to leave as soon as Dizzy gets here. Get everything on the sled. Karin, Ross , Reaper, load the Zephyrs onto the sled and take the Thunderhammer. Head towards the entrance and wait inside. Do not go down the elevator until I give the go".

"Sir, the ground is turning to mush here, I don't think we can make it. Even if we did, if we go down, how the hell will that be better when we got a veritable earth spasm going on here? Karin called in. "Trust me on this, the dig site was reinforced. They built it solid" hey replied.

Karin and Ross moved the extra Zephyrs onto the sled, siting them down , almost in fetal positions. Reaper climbed up into the spider-mech , up a metal ladder then through a heavy ,hardened hatched. The start up procedure was long , Reaper knew. It was up to him to make sure that everything worked.

A roar sounded through the desolate wasteland. An icy shard erupted form the ground. "Dizzy , get your Zhuk into the dig site. We're abandoning the outpost" Ryuki radioed. "Alright, we can see the watch tower, we'll be in the dig site in about ten minutes" she replied, with a seeming intensity and nervousness in her voice. She felt the ground begin to shiver, the vibrations making their way through the armor plating and hydraulic actuators, through the blast shield surrounding the crew compartment . The eerie sounds of distant crashes ringing inside the command deck, through the thick plating and armored cage.

The Thunderhammer was already halfway to the gate when Ryuki crossed into the complex. Ross's mech walked in backwards, slowly, with its autorifle poised to fire. "Alright, you go down first Ross, when the Thunderhammer comes in , I'll send it down. Ill bring Dizzy down on the last ride. Secure the floor when you get there" Ryuki ordered.

Down the platform went , Ross alone with his flood lights beaming into the void. Karin's mech reached the platform once it came back up , its huge frame barely fitting onto the elevator. The sled was disconnected and left with Ryuki. Down and up again the platform went. Ryuki pushed the sled onto the platform and sent it back down. He turned his view port out towards the entrance to see the Zhuk only minutes away. His palms became sweaty upon realizing how much the ground was waving in the distance, like a solid ice sea. The waves lifted the Zhuk up and then let it down. Tension built up in his neck as he focused on Dizzy's mech. His muscles ached of exhaustion again. The pressure was building, how long could he take it, he wondered. Cold sweat ran down his back, his palms becoming more moist as Dizzy closed in.

A relieving wave of endorphins rushed through his body when the Zhuk stepped onto the platform. The elevator came back up when the ground broke apart. Just enough time left to push the sled and go down. The relentless thunder of breaking ice sounded as if the planet was being torn apart. The cold sweats didn't stop until the roars dulled out at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

"Alright, so we're down here. What now?" Barry asked. "The planet is cracking apart up there. Wait. Why's it so quiet down here? Its like completely silent. Nothing. Nothing happening, no sounds. That doesn't make any sense".

"Yeah, something's night right about this place. Thats why we're down here. The HQ commander was not right, the base staff were not right. Nothing is right. And this place is probably why. Did you guys notice that the labs were completely automated?" Ryuki said.

"Yeah, wouldn't the scientists be in there working or something? They seemed to just go back and forth between there and here. Lets check on what they were working on" Ross said.

"I'll check if the mains are on. If they aren't we can hook the Zhuk and Thunderhammer up and run off their compact fusion reactors", Karin said.  
>"No, wait we shut down the main generator, its on back up power right now. Go straight to hooking in the spiders" Ryuki commented.<p>

Ryuki worked through each desk, looking for anything, a report or some notes. There had to be something that could tell them what was going on. He checked the computers. Nope, the main lines were still down. How much back up power was there, he wondered.

He wandered around , sifting through papers and notebooks. Nothing strange or unusual , though the research conducted was strange. There were outlines, technical specifications for things that didn't exist. This was supposed to be a dig site, exobiology and archeology. What were they doing here with futuristic designs.

The drawers were all left unlocked, he found. More notes and lab books , all detailing weapon systems that were much to large to be inside the complex. No, these weren't just too big, they were too powerful too. Most modern capital ship weapons were focused multi-petawatt solid state lasers. Tens of billions of peta-watts. More than enough to ignite a new star. Or collapse it.

"Hey cap, I found a map. It doesn't look right man. It's got another elevator shaft that goes about a kilometer down. I thought that black rock up top was what they were working on?" Wasp called out. The lights flickered ,the power had switched over.

"Sir ,the power's back on. But reactors are steady but there's some kind of weird power drain coming from somewhere. How big is this place supposed to be to take that kind of power?" Karin said.

"Wasp, find that elevator, get the Zephyrs up and running, set up a perimeter in the main hall. Close off the residential area and make sure those vents are sealed tight" Ryuki ordered.

Everyone was surprised. What was going on, what was it they were supposed to be ready for. "Get on it guys" he told his dumbfounded crew.

"Everyone, make sure you're armed" he yelled out.

"Sir with all due respect, what the hell?" Barry asked. "I'm going to hold a debrief once Wasp and his group get back".

"Yeah but whats up with this elevator? Whats so special about it? Where does it go?"

"I'll explain it soon enough".

Wasp, with the help of Reaper and Dizzy , trekked into the lab complex. It was split into cells ,separated by thick glass walls. The roof was vaulted and high, with vents along the sides where the roof met the walls. The air was musty , like the entire wing was shut off for years. But it couldn't have been. The labs were well stocked with the most modern equipment available.

They searched the labs and found notebooks and lab journals , dated just recently. But the air felt old, very old. Ancient. Where was it coming from , why did it fill them with dread.

"This place, this place is not right. It feels like its been here for ages, but everything in here is new" Reaper said. "Lets find that elevator and get the hell out".

Wasp spotted something as they headed further inside. An open notebook. It was thicker than the others with a heavily bound hard cover. Maybe its some ancient book of the dead, she joked. She kept her eyes on it, until they had passed into the back of the wing.

Nothing. No doors nor any kind of exit. "What in the proper hell?" Wasp said. The map showed the wing ending with a hallway into a storage complex. It can't just end there. "Alright guys, we have to find some other way to the storage complex", she said.

"No, lets leave. We can't find this elevator, no point in staying here. Look, your map is wrong, there's nothing here" he said, his voice faltering."No its here, it has to be. Why the hell would they have made a fake map just lying around. Listen, you can go if you want but when the cap says why you came back alone , you're going to have to tell him you were a wimp".

"FINE! Whatever, lets just get this over with" Reaper's voice echoed.

Wasp went back to the lab she saw earlier, with the open hardcover. It lay on a white top table at the back of the lab. Sheets of paper were strewn around it, torn pages from a book. Looking closer, it was obvious they came from the open book. Sections from it were missing, with only the jagged scraps still attached to the spine.

She went through the book, skimming every page. It was a personal journal it seemed. There were pages about personal relationships and gossip. From be beginning till the middle, it was all the same. Then , the words changed. The handwriting was still the same ,but the sentences seemed foreign. Like someone had took the time and effort to replicate the script but ignored completely the intent of the words. Like a simulacrum trying to copy its progenitor but missing the subtlety of personality.

What was that feeling, she wondered. That deep,dark dread. The idea that something could be so similar yet so different. The dim research wing seemed to become just a little darker. This notion pricked her mind, embedding itself into her surroundings and invading her psyche. Fear. A tangled hand out of the darkness ,reaching out to her, stretching its fingers, waiting for you to grasp it, accept it , be consumed by it. It was a small idea , the notion of something replacing you, something almost like you but just a little different, was enough to make her wonder, what the hell went on down here. That inkling of thought let the darkness seep. Acceptance of the idea that something was not right. Now there was no way to ignore that hand ,waiting for you.

She took the book, the others needed to see it for themselves.


	5. Chapter 5

Mecha Frontier Chapter 5

The team returned to the main chamber visibly disturbed. The lab wing didn't match the map at all. Tiny details and nearly indiscernible abnormalities nagged them ,tugging at the back of their minds. Wasp had looked through the notebook a second time, hoping that the slow descent into insanity was just as much as a misunderstanding as the errant elevator.

Reaper reported to Ryuki. He was just as confused about the map as they were. "What the hell. Just our luck , these researchers made shoddy maps. Looks like its up to us to map this place out", he exclaimed.

Wasp was tentative. What to do with this journal, a piece of evidence showing a more sinister history of events. The missing elevator was another, along with the expertly printed falsified map. Ryuki saw her milling about aimlessly, seeing a listlessness that only deep concern could bring. "What's bothering you Wasp? You feeling as spooked as the rest of em about this?" he asked.

"Sir, this journal, its seriously bothering me. Something weird was going on here. Who ever was writing in here seemed to be going insane or something. Its just turns into a jumble of words that have no meaning. It sure as hell is written in proper grammar though. I don't like it, sir".

Definitely something was not right, Ryuki thought as he read through the book. There were sparks of genuine insanity, sentences about creeping darkness and solid shadows. One description that caught his attention though seemed even more bizarre. The journal spoke of endless hallways that inched on as one walked. Walls that seemed to contract when no one was looking. Corners that seemed not totally 90 degrees in side a cubical room. The imperceptible breaths that came through the grated floor, like a soft breeze.

He could hear it, the thumping of a heart. No it couldn't be. Nothing like that could travel through thick bulkheads and plating. "Alright lets find a way down. Start breaking walls if you have to. Im going down to that research bay , the rest of you look for any sealed doors".

"Going by yourself? Sir, are you crazy?" Wasp exclaimed. "Don't worry , I'll bring a flamer unit with me. If there are any xenos down there , I will fry them up like a BBQ on a hot winters day" he said.

Karin handed out geo-tags , simple trackers for location detection. "Now these things have a limited range, so drop a retransmitter every hundred meters or so. Any further and you'll be invisible to us. I'll be inside a Zephyr, you now just in case", she said.

"I hope that thing can stop acid blood" Reaper called out.

Rafe left the others to form teams. Why did he decide though to go alone, even he didn't know. There was something drawing him, a call that he couldn't hear. It was in his bones , vibrating through his skull and digging down into his subconscious. The unknown. A place that seemed right until little details showed its strangeness. He wanted to grasp at it, conquer it and finally quell the fear that ran through his mind. Doing it alone , it would be a test of his mettle. But in the back of his mind he screamed out. No, this isn't a smart thing to do at all. No amount of training can prepare for the unknown. Protocols dissolve , strategies falter and all preparations come undone. He pushed himself down the dim hallways, past the leaky pipes and the clouds of steam. Why, he kept asking as his body moved on its own volition.

Death, that was the unknown he was grasping for. He wanted to know it, see it, but didn't make the realization , that Death was what he was looking for. His mind still fought itself as his body pushed forward. The entrance to the bay loomed , its reinforced doors waiting for him in the coldness.

"Alright guys, team up, two per team or whatever. We're gonna go through vents,shafts ,crawlways what have you" ,Ross spoke. As the XO, it was the rare joy to have command of the team. Today though was a bitter moment. Down underground, with the floors still rumbling from the shifting ice, it could be his last chance to command. His body was stiff and tired, his mind slow. His orders were vague. It was the best he could do, with little sleep and lack of rest. Normally it would have been just an annoyance, but the eerie atmosphere laid a heaviness on his shoulders. Anxiety rose from it, with fear along with it. He could see it in the others. They too were dragging their feet and furrowing their brows. The oppressing darkness , the seemingly vast yet cramped corridors and chambers, it all left a sense of foreboding. He wished for a few stims and maybe a cup of coffee to ease his nerves.

The labs were dimly lit. It seemed power was intermittent with the lights flickering. His shadow danced against the floor, shadowy doppelgangers that stretched out towards the walls. Not a single sound other than his own feet tapping the floors , not one squeak of fatigued metal could be heard. Everything was pristine, right down to the shining chrome of the wall lights. This was no abandoned facility. A cleaning crew could have came in while he blinked to clean the place up. It was so new and strange. Even the headquarters were dilapidated compared to the labs.

But in that musk of washed walls and floors, the unsettling thought that time had ceased to move forward popped into his mind. The walls seemed to contract as he walked down to the other end. No , it was just in his mind. Nothing changed , but why was he short of breath? Something was unsettling. In all the normalcy , it just didn't look real. He touched the cold walls with his palms. His hands left moisture prints. Condensation collected and mildew spread along the wall. No longer pristine. The low light had obscured the dirt and grime that built up. His chem-light wasn't strong enough and with batteries rationed so tightly his flashlight went without power.

Tracing the moisture with his finger, he walked to the adjacent wall . The cold wall warmed as his finger slid across it. He looked, the faint outline of a door way , bounded by droplets of water. Behind the wall was warm air. This had to be the elevator. He set off on a jog back to the main chamber.

Dizzy and Wasp had made it to where Barry and Ross had found the generator room. Inside they found the still cooling plant, its fiery core burning bright. Instrumentation still hummed with electricity and displays lit with scrolling graphs and charts. Apart from the dull glow of the core, everything seemed alright. They searched the panels, opened logbooks and manuals. Nothing of interest. No hidden doors to elevators and no creeping xenos either.

Back in the utility tunnel, they saw a flashing red light at the other end. It was attached to a pull out panel, a keypad with card reader which seemed to control a heavy door. A few attempts at the panel proved useless. With nothing else to see they headed back to the others.

Barry and Ross rummaged through the crew quarters. Other than hastily tossed clothing, there was nothing out of the ordinary. In the med-bay, a journal showed logs dating back to only a few days prior. Descriptions of sundry complaints and simple ailments abound the pages. The emergency kits were still stacked neatly next the unlocked medicine locker. They cracked the locker open to find most of the anesthetics missing. Even the anesthetic gas tanks were gone. There was no sign of any recent patient though. The beds were tidy and stacks of clean linen were present in the bedding closet. All the pain killers were oddly untouched.

"You would think that people would hit the stims when slag is about to hit the fan. The place is clean like my granny's kitchen. What the frak?" Barry exclaimed. His first instinct would have been to drown himself in pain killers, just in case death looked especially gruesome.

Ross wondered too why only the anesthetics were taken. There wasn't much any could do when they went under. Maybe someone really wanted to end it all as painlessly as possible. But that would mean there were bodies. What bays they could reach were empty. It looked as if people had just got up and left. Not one bit of this made any sense.

"I really hope this wasn't some kind of cult ritual. You know what happens when people get isolated. They start going crazy, start doing weird stuff to themselves. And not the fun weird stuff. The disturbing ,vivisection kind of stuff", Barry whispered. They both finished their check of the med-bay."Ok, we might as well take the useful supplies with us, antibiotics , nanostickies , stims, whatever we can carry back. Then we'll keep looking through the rooms. Maybe we'll find some freeze dried food if we're lucky" Ross spoke.

Reaper fiddled with the micro-drones, setting them up for autonomous recon. The little bugs could fly for hours on their power cells. The problem though was that their communication was spotty when out of line of sight. The only way to make them useful was to piggyback off the repeaters. The coverage wasn't enough to get into the nooks and crannies, but just enough to get into places the others hadn't visited.

Tiny laser imagers mounted to the thorax would scan the hallways, creating a map of the complex. Reaper had programmed a set waypoint for each to follow so that they wouldn't become haplessly lost.

With the bugs in his hand, he tossed them up. The drones soared through the air before flying under their own power, flitting about like bee's. Each went its separate way , their blinking bodies disappearing into the darkness.

Rafe arrived around the same time that Dizzy and Wasp to hear their exasperated description of an all too secret door. The fact that it was near the power generator must have had some unknown significance with the mysterious power drain. But what surprised him the most was that the drain was still occuring.

"All power seemed normal, in the green. I thought you guys shut that thing down?" Dizzy said. It should have been, the generator itself was offline. That passage , the locked door, they had to have something to do with this.

"Thats some strange news" Rafe said , quite the understatement. "I think I found where the elevator is. Its a big one. And its hidden behind a solid steel wall". He watched the others contort their faces in surprise, scratching their heads in confusion.

"Yeah, it looks like we've got two things to do, breach the wall and unlock the door. We're gonna be blind , no situational awareness, no intel. These two paths are completely unheralded. Prepare yourselves. Mentally , the most".


	6. Chapter 6

Reaper was shocked what he saw. The image slowly built up to show the entire structure was larger than anyone thought. There was an entire facility constructed outside the walls. When the ice shelf shifted, an immense amount of pressure pressed up against the facility. Enough to create cracks big enough for imaging drones to enter.

None of the maps or charts showed anything other than the research post. A square kilometer was all that was mapped. This encompassing structure, it was nearly ten square kilometers. And those kilometers weren't empty. It didn't make any sense at all but the base was well armed.

Reaper walked in on Ryuki as he began his speech. Their new orders, to breach the fake wall in the lab bay. "Sir , that wall may not be the only part that wasn't mapped. I sent out some drones to do recon. They somehow got into an entirely separate structure. This place is just siting inside of an even bigger base. And its not empty. The best I can tell, there are tanks, jump-fighters and walkers just sitting in there. Its like they're in storage. Someone was planning on doing something big with em".

"Frakking hell, what the hell has Steelhelm been doing these few years? This was an archeology dig. They said they found ancient ruins. This is not what you do when you find alien slag!" Ryuki yelled incoherently. His mouth lathered with spit, his mind seemingly breaking in front of the rest of the crew. It wasn't his mind breaking. It was the rules of engagement. "Alright. Frak all of this. We are going find out what the hell this place is and blow it up if we need to. They left us here for dead, I will make sure this place is frakked up by the time I take my last breath. People, we've got enough tanks and bombs to take down a Sol Republic garrison. Lets make the most of it" he yelled.

There were a few things that made the unknown bearable. An inquisitive mind and a thirst of knowledge. A metric frakton of bombs and bullets was one of the others. "Load up the laser cutters onto the Zephyrs. Get those striders prepped for movement. Pack everything you can on the sled. The first thing we're going to do is a bit of redecorating in the lab bay".

The column of Zephyrs reached the entrance to the lab. A burst of light in the darkness, the flicker of steel melting under intense laser energy. The collomated beams cut deep into the walls as fletchettes of metal burst into flames. Embers bounced on the ground before disappearing. Ice had cooled the heated walls fast enough to cause cracks to race up and down the quenched steel. Ryuki's Zephyr approached the cut walls and dug its manipulators into the cracks , tearing them apart , one panel at a time.

Another round of cutting , this time with flamers along side to make the walls pliant. The lasers dug even deeper as the red hot liquid walls dripped down to the ground, pooling into blobs of blackened metal. The flamers died. The sound of ejected fuel tanks rang through the hallways followed by the heavy clamping and pneumatic arms of new tanks. Again the fires exploded, the walls now loose enough to punch through. The new entrance was tall and wide, big enough for striders to scurry through.

Making room inside the labs involved strategically destroying vast portions of it. Shattered glass flew through the air and tiny explosions rattled under the armored feet of the walkers. Thin walls were shorn clean from the bulkheads and tossed like pieces of cardboard.

The lasers lit up the wall. Its thickness made it difficult to cut which meant the flamers were activated again. Still not enough. While the slow progress was still progress, Ryuki grew impatient. He wasn't afraid anymore, it was time to face unknown. He kept restraint though. The munitions they carried were all that they had. No supply drops would be coming. The trigger tempted him though.

It seemed hours had passed between cutting and cooling. The lasers heated up too fast for continuous use. With the limited supply of focus crystals, they needed to be careful and precise. Burst of the laser reduced the lifespan of the tool, each used crystal leaving them one less upon a time of need.

Missiles, rockets, shells and fuel. Whether there was enough was a question that couldn't be answered until too late. For Ryuki, that answer would have terrible consequences. So for him, this would be the step across a threshold from which no one could return. Nothing left for them to fight for, alone on a plan seemingly breaking apart as time passed on, their only choice was to break through the wall and descend down to the source of the power draw. He hopped it would be enlightenment waiting for them. He felt the only light though would be from the the barrel of a particle cannon.

The wall was softened enough. An impromptu battering ram ,scavenged from the supports holding the roof up, was lifted by two of the mechs. They heaved , the sound of their whirring servos mixing with the clang of metal. Liquid metal flowed out from the seams as the wall began to collapse on itself. With one final crash of the ram, the wall broke to pieces.

Behind it was a vista no one would believe. A gigantic ice cavern with shards of ice as big as city blocks hanging from the ceiling. Below was a seemingly endless descent and just beyond visual sight was something massive.

The freight elevator too was larger than expected. It seemed indicative of what went down. The scans showing large stockpiles of armaments made more sense now, though still not enough to seem rational.

"About fifty meters down is the floor with all the armaments. We can set up base there in case we have to fall back" Reaper reported. The scans were still inconclusive regarding the depths of the cavern. The drones had too little power to make the trip down let alone transmit anything of use. The armaments floor was their best choice for base of operations, at least until they reach the bottom.

"Bring in the spider-tanks first, send them down to the armory to set up a fire base in case something nasty decides to welcome us. Zephyrs go in next" Rafe called out through the radio. With a skeleton crew handling a battalion sized armored formation, it would take much longer to make any movement. A single pilot in each spider-tank was all they could spare while keeping communications running. Karin took over the comms through the Thunderhammer's wide-band radio transmitter. The Zhuk followed with its targeting computer slaved to Dizzy piloting the Thunderhammer. The six Zephyrs waited as the behemoths loaded onto the elevator platform.

It suddenly lurched downward, its gears and servos breaking the ice covering them. They soon disappeared under them. The distance they traveled seemed longer than it should have been, with the sound of the elevator clamps coupling with the next floor sounding distant and weak.

The elevator soon came back for the rest of the team. The trip down was harrowing to more than one of them. The sight of a vast , nearly endless cavern , sent waves of anxiety through them. None had seen something so vast that was of natural origins. The sheer size left them with a sublime sensation of awe and terror. The dark shadows that covered the cavern hid the terrifying immensity and with it whatever lurking in them. Someone coughed and the echo roared back. One could have thought that something out there called back to them.

The elevator reached the armory. Apart from their own breathing, the only sound heard was the rollers that screeched against the rails. Coming to a halt let out a grinding whine before the clamps locked into place and the rampart extended. Ahead they saw the vast stores of armaments. The giant armor was all one room like a massive hangar. Big enough for a Gungnir class frigate to launch out of. There were rows of racks filled with weapons ,from rifles to the massive infantry rail guns.

Beside the racks were long columns of armor. A plethora of spider-walkers ,tanks and hardsuits lined up as if waiting for inspection. Ryuki couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Why bring all this down here if that wasn't the case, he wondered. There had to be a reason but then why would they just leave everything behind?

The floor shook as another ice quake rumbled. Its passing was marked with thunderous echos as the ice cracked from the shock wave. A slight tremor under their feet kept them unsteady. It grew as if coming closer.

"Get on thermals" Ryuki ordered. The view changed to a mixture of blues and purples with the masses of frozen armor obscuring anything behind them. An unmistakable sound , the foot steps of a walker, travelled through the air. Still no source of heat could be detected. "Batteries maybe?" Dizzy radioed. Ryuki admonished her "no chatter!".

Without any verbal exchange, the Zephyrs scattered into a semicircle, all facing towards the end of the armory. The steps became louder with the sound of steel bending on impact with the polyalloy feet of a giant war machine.

A quick glimpse of a spot of red alerted the team to the unknown walker's position. Another blip gave them its heading. Its slow jaunt was unusual though. Its movements had no reasoning behind them. It wasn't flanking them or rushing them. It would soon be in line of sight but any pilot would have known that.

Excruciating minutes passed as it came closer. Its thundering steps left no doubt of its location. The thermal images showed its size to be of the same as the Zephyrs , but its shape didn't indicate any arms. Any moment it would be in view and with each passing second the team grew more anxious.

The lumbering mech continued its slow march but it seemed it hadnt noticed the others. "Do not fire unless fired on" Ryuki whispered into the radio. They watched it move past them , its slouched body not even turning towards them. Ryuki turned the therm-optic vision off to see something disturbing.

Mounted on the head of the lumbering Zephyr was a pulsating cyst. Its fleshy red body enveloped the mechs head and shoulders. The arms were replaced with blackened flesh and pulsing veins. It was obvious that the reason it did not respond was because it couldn't see them. But the sound that the active reactors of the spider-tanks was drawing it to the striders.

"Shut off your engines" Ryuki radioed to Dizzy's team. It would be too late. The sloth was still approaching them. Ryuki switched the master-arm to active. The fire control computer projected the expected arrival point of a single round from his auto-gun. Ryuki breathed in. He pressed down on the trigger.

The muzzle flash lit up the dark armory . Air burst into a blue trail behind the shell as it raced towards the walker. The sonic boom rattled the ice loose from the roofs. By the time the walker noticed , the shell had reached the core. It impacted with an explosion. A second explosion erupted out of the chest as super-heated liquid copper burst through the armor plating.

But it was still standing. It turned, now its bulbous head revealing the single , off-center ,blood cracked eye. It wavered where it stood but the eye looked straight at Ryuki as if seeing right into the flight-pit. Its molten innards poured out like bright hot entrails. It took a tentative step , its fuel cells damaged too much to let it move any faster.

Ryuki fired again, aiming for the eye. A second round raced towards it. He could see its eye widen as it watched for a split moment before the shrapnel shredded through it. It burst like a balloon. White fluid poured out with bits and pieces of fleshy pieces. The mech finally slammed to the ground.

The radios remained silent. No one could fathom what had just happened nor could they even understand what they had seen. Barry spoke up first. All he could muster was a disjointed stream of words. Once the shock passed he finally spoke coherently. "What the frak".

Everyone froze up , their eyes completely focused on the mess of pus and metal strewn on the ground. The fleshy arms still twitched with residual stimulus. Ryuki was the first to approach the carcass. He stepped out from his mech and approached on foot. He peered inside the gaping hole to see flesh and deep brown blood.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn't make any sense. The metal husk ,the shell cracked open further. Its innards sloshed and dripped onto the cold ground. Its body heat formed wisps of moisture as the flesh met the chilled air. What is this, what the hell is it. Ryuki murmered unintelligibly, his words unable form a coherent thought. Nothing, not even the speculative xenobiology primers he had taken, had prepared him for this sight. This completely alien organism, successfully melded to a combat frame so utterly that both it and its adoptive body functioned as one. The arms still contained vestiges of the ferromagnetic pistons and the myomer super-structure, yet so efficiently joined as to look like bone and skin in the heaping mass of mottled flesh. The piston fluid leaked in spurts like black blood. Errant electrical activity morphed the textured fluid into crystalline forms till it lost consistency.

The team had already began to assemble around the husk. Their eyes widened at the sight of metal and flesh entwined in a heap of scrap. Slack jawed, none mustered a single word. As they stood standing motionless, their breath fogged the air ,their body heat mixing in with those of the dead machine. The sound of ice cracking snapped the team out of their daze.

"Well , I guess this isn't a bug hunt anymore huh?" Reaper said.

The walls rumbled again. The cavern would surely collapse the rate that the ice shelf was breaking. None of it was normal. An Ice shelf this thick should be stable ,even with an external force acting on it. Ryuki saw tiny cracks crawling up the walls. Then the realization came to him, that whatever was causing the ice to break was internal. Something was happening to the planetoid. He didn't mention this thought to anyone lest he spark hysteria. There was no way off the snow ball anyway.

"We're going row by row and killing what ever else is in here. Prep flamers and HEAT rounds, shoot anything that doesn't respond to comms. I want the spiders at the entrance to guard against anything getting out of here" Ryuki ordered.

They hustled to their mechs. Ryuki's calm attitude assuaged the others. What seemed to be impossibility became a routine event. Their minds shifted to managing the start up procedures, switching munitions types and preparing fire control systems.

Wasp thought to herself, so what if we just saw a dead xeno. We've got orders to carry out. The nagging fear was pushed away , replaced with duty.

The team split into three groups. Wasp, Reaper and Dizzy piloted the two spider-tanks at the entrance. Karin and Barry took their mechs up the right side of the hangar while Ross and Ryuki took the left. The plan was to progress one row at a time with both teams checking the same row by walking to the middle and then back,tapping each mech with the stock of their rifles as the walked through.

The hangar was unlit. Only their spotlights revealed the darkness. Shadows stretched and contorted as the lights passed over them. An eerie sensation crawled over Ryuki and his team. In those shadows, something could be waiting. Each hollow tap led them further into the shadows, farther and farther from the gleaming lights of the spider-tanks and deeper into the unknown.

Ryuki radioed his team as often as possible. Keep their minds out of the darkness, keep them from scaring themselves. The regular breaks in the silence alleviated the loneliness of the ordeal. Deep underground, with no idea if rescue would come and the prospect of facing their own machines commandeered against them, one could only feel desperation and isolation. Ryuki made the effort to be brave against the fear of uncertainty. He knew what they felt and knew how dangerous it would be for them to lose themselves in anxiety.

"Row 15 cleared, move up to the next one. Keep any eye for movement behind us" he radioed in. The others called back acknowledging him. The simple act of saying "roger" over the radio drained the anxiety enough for them to concentrate at the job at hand. But the further down the hangar, the dimmer the lights became as the volumetric darkness began to overtake even their own mechs. Their four mechs, far from any point of escape, were perilously courting danger with each hollow resonance.

Dizzy's team was calm in opposition to Ryuki's . Though there were only three of them to the two spider-tanks, the thick metal skin provided a sense of protection that was oddly missing from the heavily armed Zephyrs. The heaters provided sufficient warmth from the biting cold, a half full coffee mug provided much needed sustenance. The spider's automated alert system kept her team up to date to even the most mundane happenings. While the others struggled with isolation, Dizzy's team was becoming acquainted with the rarity of boredom.

In the midst of boredom the team began casual conversation to alleviate the ennui.

"I can't believe I am stuck on this forsaken ice ball. Frak, we don't even have a way off it! No ship around to take us off this dump. What the frak are we supposed to do?" Dizzy lamented.

In the other spider, Reaper and Wasp argued whether rescue would arrive in the absence of any communications.

"You know it too, the comms in the HQ were trashed. Couldn't get anything offworld. They would have to know something's wrong when no one's giving the daily report, right? They wouldn't just leave us here?" Reaper asked.

"Frak, they dropped us off here, they probably wouldn't care if we're still alive" Wasp retorted.

"Well, Im not going to just wait for the cold to kill me. I want out and I know the Cap feels the same way. I mean, theres a hangar here, maybe we'll find a ship ?" Dizzyreplied.

"Yeah and it'll be infested with xenos" Reaper radioed back.

Methodically searching the hangar for signs of what could only be considered an infestation was driving Ryuki's team close to the edge of nervous breakdown. The short radio chats were becoming inane as they tried to redirect their attention from the utter otherness of what they were searching for. How to get the perfectly brewed cup of coffee was the rallying point for them, far from Ryuki's intention with the regular radio talk. They were losing their situation awareness and only bad things would come of it. Their minds were too scattered, Ryuki knew it was just a mater of time before the inky darkness grabs hold of them.

"Keep the chatter down, we're hear to look for infiltrators, not recipes for peach cobbler" he radioed. The slight static in the message turned his words into phantom sounds , like a ghost speaking through inanimate objects. The static became noticeable the deeper they went. As they approached the end of the hangar, a strange clicking sound rattled through their radios. The interference was intermittent but strong, like a high powered device was malfunctioning. The only thing Ryuki could think of that was able to generate a EM field strong enough to do that had to be an rail gun capacitor bank. "Stay alert, somethings out there" he radioed calmly.

The team spread out into staggered formation. A faint spark , hidden by the deactivated hulks , popped close to the ground. Bright flakes of light bounced on the ground as something slid across it. Ryuki lifted his rifle and primed his rockets. Karin and Ross prepped their flamethrowers. Barry shivered before unlocking the master-arm of his rail gun. The slow misshapen body walked on heavy steps. The ground vibrated as it closed on them. With their lights frantically scanning the darkness, the unknown enemy grew more sinister in the flailing shadows.

Bolts of electricity raced across the floor as violent hum rose above the plodding foot steps. In the cover of the silent warmachines, it continued to approach, the hum growing louder. The capacitors were close to exploding. It wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't for the micro-fusion generator that powered the weapon.

"Fall back, fall back! Go go !" Ryuki screamed through the radio. The mechs slowly changed directions as the tracks in their feet expanded. Ryuki drove his Zephyr backwards to keep his eyes on the incoming hot-bot. The others dashed as fast as possible to the other end of the hangar.

The radios crackled with energy as the electromagnetic field began to collapse around the reactor core. The capacitors, began to pop, till one exploded in a flash of molten metal. The reactor core continued to consume its fuel, all failsafes failing utterly. Its fuel pellet, sitting inside a bilious sack that consumed the solid reactor body, burned hot. The heat from the pellet turned the bile to plasma, the plasma further burning through field . Finally, the fusion was fed by the bile , a strange mixture of thorium and inorganic fluids , its reaction now increasing. The violent collapse of the field tore the now fleshy gun-arm that hung fused to the hunchback mech, its red mooneye exploding into pus and sparks. The pulse of electromagnetic energy as the fusion reaction collapsed on itself surged through the air at the speed of light.

Ryuki's team was lucky. Not enough fuel for a pulse of destructive proportions. The EMP was contained by the rows of inactive mechs, forming a sort of impromptu cage to contain the energy. Some ammunition cooked off, exploding several of the walkers.

Tanks filled with combustible fuel burst into flames as superheated shrapnel pierced their walls.The heat of the flames released the pressure on the fire-suppression nozzles on the sides of the walls and roof with their foaming dispersants spraying onto the blaze.

A flurry of chatter erupted alongside the blaze. Confusion set in and in the haste to figure out what was happening; one of the spider tanks began firing. Communication was jumbled as the others attempted to switch channels only to hear frantic screaming. It was Reaper, completely consumed with fear, who was firing. After a few shells whizzed above their heads, a ruckus burst from the comms. Dizzy grabbed hold of the controls , punching Reaper into ground.

"Cap, Reaper went crazy when he saw you guys running ahead of a bunch of explosions. I had to knock him out. " Dizzy called in, her voice cracking with anxiety.

The fire died out leaving behind smoldering wreckage and rows of charred machines. With the last glint of light they saw what they thought would be their headquarters lay in ash. With no guarantees that there wouldn't be more infested machines , there were few choices left to them. Go back up and wait for the ice the shattered the metal walls. Or go further down, to the source of the massive power drain. Neither option seemed to have any possibility of survival, lest a rescue boat burst through the ice shelf to save them.

There was little else they could do. Ryuki explained that staying in the hangar would just be a waiting game for more of those things. The elevator platform had swayed in the time they were in the hangar and there was no other way back up if that broke. Going further down would have just brought them even farther from rescue. And whether rescue would arrive was even less certain.

"We're in this till the end. Might as well find out why" Ross spoke up as the others stayed silent. "If worst case scenario is that rescue never shows up and theres no way off this rock, we might as well spend it either figuring out what's was draining all the power or blowing up a lot of stuff. I get the feeling we'll get to do both" he finished.

In the wake of fatalism, a sort of courage developed. Facing death's chasm with no where else to turn, with the sound of metal whining against the weight of crushing ice, against the silent depths, there really was only one option, to march forward. Sitting still, waiting for the cold embrace to overcome them seemed too passive. They were trained to be soldiers. "We're going to do this professionally", Ryuki said.

With their shelter in a precarious condition and the planetoid seemingly breaking apart, they ventured back on the platform. Everything they could carry within mechanical limits were packed, stowed and hauled to the platform. "Show of hands, who wants to go down first?"

Ryuki moved first onto the platform with Ross and Karin coming along. The skids were well iced now with a thin layer of liquid water giving them a frictionless surface. It was easy enough to have the Zephyrs pull them onto the platform. The more unwieldy spider-tanks would go last, in case a full scale battle broke out below. In a fast fight, they would be the first the fail.


	8. Chapter 8

The smoldering remains were surrounded by fast rising steam. The fires continued to burn between the knocked-down mechs. The hurried pace of the team belied the creeping fear that stalked them from out of the dancing shadows cast by the dormant machines. The fire played against the icicles, reflecting light into their electronic eyes as their electro-optical sensors attempted to keep watch of any minute movement. The sleds were loaded as high as possible with fuel tanks and munitions. Unfortunately, food was not stockpiled in the underground hangar.

"We've got about two weeks worth of supplies that we scavenged from here and topside. If rescue doesn't come soon, then..." Barry trailed off.

There were murmurs of discontent mixed with anxiety.

The freight elevator slowly descended. The light from the surface grew dim. Below them the darkness expanded. Their own high powered lights were too weak to penetrate the darkness. More sounds of cracking ice, all around them, left them with a vague sense of dread, as if the world was on the brink of collapsing on them. Shudders from the platform kept them from becoming complacent. Dizzy's fear of heights kept her eyes fixed forward while Reaper and Wasp imagined what was lurking in the darkness.

A sound, like lightning , crackled through the air. The tectonic plates of the planetoid were being aggravated by the tidal forces between it and the gas giant it orbited. It must have been a natural occurrence then but it wasn't any less precarious. Still , if that were the case, then the ice cavern should have collapsed. Ryuki wondered why such an expansive chamber could still stand. The thought of dying under the weight of ice suspended above him was a nagging one. It was best not to think to hard into it, Ryuki convinced himself.

The rickety platform moved slowly down. The first group had already set up camp at the bottom by now, the captain surmised. Next to him,the Thunderhammer was lit up like a sky scraper. Every one of its lights were on, in an attempt to pierce the darkness surrounding them. No good. It was like the depths of the ocean, all light sucked up by the darkness, consumed to never be seen again. Air pressure was increasing too. As they passed further down, the air massed above them creating a wall of pressure that lay a heavy weight across their shoulders and caused many to feel their ear drums compress.

Still further down,the utter darkness turned foreboding. Distant thumps as ice broke reached them as dull knocks. The platform shook more, its track surely reaching the end of its life expectancy. The brakes engaged ;the descent slowed imperceptibly. It would take another half hour to reach to a full stop.

Below them they could see the dim spotlights of the camp. Thermal imaging showed the team had arrived still alive. Strange thought ,to think that they would have died on the way down. That was the shadows, their slender tendrils gripping the mind with what ifs. The platform vibrated and came to an abrupt halt. The camp sat surrounded by barren plains. Nothing but ice. So where exactly was this elevator supposed to lead to, Ryuki wondered.

Even with the floodlights , it was difficult to see farther than a few meters. No wind left the cavern ominously quiet with only the cracking of ice to relieve the stark silence. Cold air seeped into their mechs. Their envirosuits,bulky as they were, had less luck preventing the biting chill from spreading. Being deep underground though shielded them from the frosty gusts and the tents ,with the billowing air pockets, stayed warm.

Only the mechs were an issue so far. As they functioned, the dissipated heat warmed the air around them. Dew condensed into the crevices and joints, threatening to crack even the most hardened armor should the water froze.

The spider-tanks towed with them a set of mobile hangars. These structures lay flat like plates , with tube outlets jutting out from them. Those outlets, when filled with a nanofluid would feed into constricted metal tubes. The tiny nanomachines would deposit on them , with the iron solution and build out the tubes into metal beams. The metal tubes would lift themselves on the pressure of the fluid and then solidify as the ferromagnetic nanofluid went to work.

Two large hangars sprang up after two minutes of being fed with the fluid. Their walls were filled with air pockets, a honeycomb of heated oxygen between two thin metal skins. Heated by the mech exhaust, the hangars kept the frost at bay.

The camp was fifty meters from the hangars. A central structure,similar in construction as the hangars, stood in the middle of the smaller tents. Its bulbous shape poked out from the ground with a single entrance, gated with an airlock. Inside were crates of weapons and armor. The food was kept in a separate storage shed, just to be safe .

The team gathered around a makeshift fire pit with their still gloved hands stretching palm first to the fire. Sneezes marked the deteriorating health with the cold shivers marking the onset of exhaustion. Ryuki looked at their sullen faces through the windows in their helmets. A dim outlook set in,amongst them and himself. They weren't going to make it. There was no other way to think of it. Not to them,surrounded in darkness with only the heat of the fire to keep them warm.

The first thing then was to raise their spirits. Food ,good hearty food. Their rations included prepared meals, not like the rations they would normally have. Their outpost was to be semi-permanent and with that came halfway decent meals. A small group brought back stacks of read-to-heat meals. The fire pit was topped with a grill for cooking the plates of food inside their plastophene packages.

It was the first time since the outpost was built that they had a chance to eat sitting down. There were plates of all-beef steaks and mashed potatoes, the noticeably thick steam forming ribbons in the air. Dessert was warm apple pies with real diced apples in the filling.

The warm food distracted them from the obstacles they faced. Their rations would dwindle. Their equipment become unusable. The warmth escaping their bodies, the ticking clock of hypothermia.

Few words were exchanged. What was there to talk about? There was no small talk to be had. Only a plan would get them to speak. And without one they all dragged themselves to their tents. That night they slept at the mercy of the freezing air.

Sleep came fast. The morning,from what their watches told them, brought a new problem. The cold had left their muscles aching. Moving was hard and painful. The days of nearly constant activity in below freezing temperatures had wreaked havoc on their bodies.

"If I don't get any coffee in me, I don't think I'll be able to get out of my sleeping bag" , Barry said to Ryuki in their tent. Great hunger too caught up to them along with the after effects of exhaustion. Their limited supplies required Ryuki to clamp down on them.

"This isn't a vacation. This food has to last us for a long time. Our first goal is to find whatever was draining the reactor. Our second goal is to stay alive till rescue arrives" he said to the gathered team for their morning meal. "We need to be cautious about this. I don't want to restrain anyone for eating so remember the situation we're in. Guys, we need unit cohesion if we want to survive this" he finished.

"I guess we can keel over after rescue arrives" someone murmured in the crowd.

Dizzy and Wasp were left to guard duty inside the Zephyrs. Karin remained to check the damage to the mechs. The EMP shock wave was strong enough to spark the electronic valves of the fuel tanks, the damage they could have done to their equipment needed checking.

The two remaining zephyrs went out with two buggies. Ross and Barry took the mechs while Ryuki and Reaper rode the buggies. Venturing beyond the camp brought them into the heart of darkness. The buggies pulled ahead to scout out the path while the mechs stayed behind waiting for the go-signal.

All they found was nothingness. The bare ground, with no sign of anything ever being there taunted them. An elevator that led to nowhere, deep inside the flat plains of nothingness, what a joke, Barry thought. It was the epitome of a bug hunt. Searching for something that probably didn't exist dampened any kind of hope they had.

No, Ryuki thought. "We're going to keep going till we find something. If your mechs need any supplies , head back now. We're going to be out here for awhile" he radioed. Something was down there. It was big enough to send a multi-terawatt reactor to the edge of its its operating limits. There was no way that it was nothing. All the evidence pointed to something down there. No one would be frivolous enough to just build an elevator kilometers down into an ice shelf.

Barry and Ross declined the offer to head back. There was nothing for them at the camp, sitting in silence. It was better to be out in the darkness then to wait for whatever would come for them.

A tremor passed under them. The mechs braced themselves while the buggies slid about. Then another tremor ,smaller and quicker , passed. They scanned the area , seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

"Switch to thermal" Ryuki radioed.

"Why? All we'll see is blue" Barry radioed back.

"Sweet bejeebus man, just do what he said" Ross replied.

Long trails of deep red appeared under them when the thermal sights activated. They snaked through the ice out towards a sheer ice wall nearly a kilometer away. On the periphery of his vision, Reaper saw something slither rapidly though one of the tunnels. Too fast to make it, it seemed like a massive worm had traversed it.

"This is insane! This is insane!" , he yelled. The dark red glows then flickered. More creatures sliding through , with their arms and legs clearly visible. His intermittent messages over the radio were jumbled and disjointed. His mind was rushing ,trying to make sense of the sight. He continued as the others yelled back at him to calm down but another tremor passed underneath. "Xenos man, they're everywhere! Cant you see them!?" , he cried over the radio.

There, in perfect view, they saw a new tunnel forming under them. A creature, long and thin with stubby arms and legs, crawled through. Its mouth expanded to twice its width , its jaw seemingly detaching completely. The silhouette writhed as it used its mouth as an excavator, its body squirming as its head expanded hideously. A trail of dripping red followed it, like a trial of blood.

Reaper ,in his destabilized state, slammed the throttle on the buggy and raced off into the abyss. The tremors continued and the loud crashes of shattering ice echoed through the darkness. "Ross, you're inertial map is working right? Ryuki asked. "Yes sir, I'll prep the short range radar. Just lead the way".

Reaper's broken mind could no longer sustain any semblance of protocol. Aliens, real life xenos. It all seemed to be a joke till Reaper saw it first hand. All the myths ,the legends, the stories of freighters found empty , colonies left desolate, they were just stories. Inky bodies ,undefined , snatching up people , it was just fake. To most, it was just that.

But the reality was blood red. The mech pilots already had seen the evidence. Reaper though didn't realize what happened. When he heard xenos, they were always with unexplained mechanical or ecological failures. The mech that blew up into a shower of flames and the exploding tanks of fuel, those were supposed to be mechanical failures. The computers must have screwed up something or the AI controls broke. He didn't see the entrails, the molten hot steel pouring out like blood. He didn't see the fleshy sinew , the bulbous lobes or the death rattles of the writhing limbs. Now, incontrovertible proof wriggled underneath him.


	9. Chapter 9

The tracks were etched deep into the permafrost. A thin thread of black oil traveled in between them , still warm from its proximity to the engine. The fuel intake was leaking and it was only a matter of time before Reaper would find himself stranded in the cold darkness. The floodlights only revealed to him the flat tundra ahead. It was completely featureless, barren and alien. Nothing had touched this area ,for millions of years except for the tidal forces that kept the planetoids core just above its melting point.

Still exasperated and confused, he drove with his foot planted firmly on the accelerator. Reaper took no notice of the precipitous drop in fuel. His eyes were only set on the ground ahead , within the confines of the cones of light set amidst an impenetrable darkness. Nothing else seemed to catch his attention. Not the caution alarm on the fuel gage, not the slowly changing landscape , nor the quickly approaching ice wall.

The instant he saw it, a sheer wall that glistened under the light, his instinct took over. With his foot on the accelerator, he kept the buggy moving while pitching it to the side. Wheels began to slip with the loss of grip leading to the buggy to tip over. Now sliding on its side, still quite fast. The buggy slammed wheels first into the wall. The force of impact compressed the door frame, lodging the one free door into the passenger seat.

Reaper lost consciousness for a moment before waking up with vague memories of the crash. His hands reached for the seatbelt, finding it securely buckled. He struggled to release the harness before hitting the emergency release under the seat. On his back now he began to kick open the shattered windshield. One swift kick popped it off the frame.

As he crawled out he could feel a sharp pain in his chest. His ribs were aching , his sides purple from trauma. Breathing was difficult too , as each breath felt like a large weight was bearing down on his chest. Standing up was difficult. The ice was slick with a mixture of oil and wet ice. His feet slipped , bringing him to his hands and knees.

His vision was still blurry. A slight concussion had developed when his head was snapped back onto the plastic frame of his seat. His aching head kept him in a dull pain as he attempted to crawl towards the wall.

Now sitting against it, he could only see what was revealed by the floodlights that still functioned. Nothing, absolutely nothing but tundra. Only the wall and the wrecked buggy existed in this world. No lights from rescuers, no xenos out to feast on easy prey. Nothing. And in that realization was something more horrific than death, that his life would end without anyone noticing.

Another tremor passed under him. Chunks of ice fell from the wall. At first it seemed to be pebble sized pieces. Then the sound of cracking ice screeched in his ears. He looked up and all he saw was a shiftless emptiness. His eyes strained , trying to absorb what little light that existed. A small form seemed to be moving, an amorphous shadow against the inky void.

It was quick and it was large. He didn't realize how tall the wall was but saw quickly that the falling chunk was no mere pebble. Reaper struggled to pull himself away from the wrecked buggy. His gloved hands failed to grasp anything ,forcing him to slide across the ice using his knees and elbows.

The slab of ice crashed down on the wreck with a tremendous force. Axles popped off like bottle caps, the wheels sent hurtling into the darkness. Huge cracks appeared under it as if the floor was about to fall through. The floodlights went out , leaving Reaper with only the sound of shattering ice sheets.

Furiously he attempted to activate the suit lights. Nothing happened. Switching on the HUD was just the same. Looking around , he found the reason. Under him was a pool of fuel cell fluid and the smashed remnants of the battery that held it. A long string of swears in English, Spanish and Galactic thundered through his helmet .

He searched his body for a flare , the envirosuits always came with them. A swift snap of the cap of the only flare he had bathed the surroundings in bright red. Tiny droplets on thecy surface refracted the light into a sea of infinitesimally small yellow dots. He surveyed the damage,seeing everything thoroughly crushed, leaving little hope that the radio on board would have survived. His own radio lay smashed into pieces at the edge of the ice crater.

His eyes moved onto the ice wall and saw something peculiar. It seemed the ice wasn't completely solid. PIeces of ice that fell when the buggy crashed revealed a blue tinged surface . He crawled towards the open patch of ice , mindful of the slowly dying flare. With the little energy he had left, he braced himself against the wall with his hands and slowly stood up, one foot after the other.

The open patch was close , just within arms reach. He pulled the glove from his right hand and touched the bare surface. It was metal, cold as the ice that encased it. He knocked on it with the solid tone telling him that the wall was solid. A thin layer of ice still covered the patch though. He used his loose glove to wipe off the tiny pieces of ice. Now the rivets and panel lines were clear before the flare died.

Nowhere was there an indication that rescue was coming. Though the tracks his buggy left would be enough to find him, finding the tracks in this desolation.

Only touch was the remaining sense that didn't actively bring jabs of pain to him. With no light, there was only the ice wall to guide him. The rescue beacon , a standard issue strobe light, was loaded into the emergency chest that now was flattened. It was a compromise between the safety corp and the operational HQ , necessary since unduly loading up a soldier with unnecessary equipment reduced their effectiveness. Just one flare was left, kept close to his chest, like his fleeting sense hope.

His pained march against the ice wall was merely to keep his body from freezing over. The dead silence was the perfect backdrop though to heighten the presence of rescue vehicles. That would be the time to light up the flare. But the encroaching frost would get to him before that if no shelter was found.

His body was tired but now the need of shelter forced him onward. Careful steps on the slippery ice led to a slow and methodical search with only his hand to guide him. Though his envirosuit kept the warmth in , there was nothing to replenish it. It may take hours to reach hypothermia, his life would depend on prompt rescue. Otherwise , no amount of insulating fibers would keep him alive for long

It seemed like he travelled kilometers with his hand against the ice. The cold pierced through his glove , forcing him to switch hands as he hobbled along. His watch, its green glowing backlight splashing the surroundings in a pale light, showed two hours had passed.

TIme passed slowly without any stimuli. Everything seemed to move slower, feel more dull and featureless. The floor seemed to blur and the ice wall seemed to expand into the horizon. His hand become numb but there was little he felt before then making the transition noticeable. Four hours passed when he slowed his walk to a shuffle.

His eyes focused into infinity, his mind blanking out but his body still creeping along. A burst of air from nearby swept over him, imparting just enough warmth to reveal the pain traveling up his arm. After a brief swearing tantrum , he picked up his pace.

His hand passed an open space suddenly which caused him to lose his balance. He twisted his body, landing on his back inside what seemed to be a tunnel. A warm breeze flowed over him, fogging his face plate and sending a tingle up his spine. It was shelter, he hoped and above all else it was warm..

He pulled himself into the cramped corridor. There he noticed a faint light ,further inside. Sitting there still cold, he was tempted to go towards it. He entertained the idea before the realization that xenos could be lurking anywhere. Partly from fear and partly from his survival instinct, he sat at the foot of the entrance.

He slipped into sleep, against his will. Then he heard the ice churn far away from him. He instantly popped the flare open and waved it outside the entrance. He couldn't see anything past the light from the flare but he could hear the distant sound of wheels tearing through the ice.

A set of 6 lights came over the horizon, followed by the massive hulks of the mechs bathed in flood lamps. He stood up , waved more, ignoring the shooting pain in his legs. He yelled, not realizing that his helmet muffled his voice.

The group aligned with the waving flare , its red flame brilliant against the black canvas of the cavern. Though nearly ten kilometers away, its was as if the darkness parted in fear of of the flare. The darkness relented and allowed the light to exist and in its hasty departure allowed it to pass through the barren wasteland unimpeded.

"HQ , this is Zephyr 1 , we have spotted what looks like an emergency flare. Its probably Reaper. Im engaging the flamers just in case" , Ryuki reported in. It was the frankness of the statement that surprised Ross. Out there, Reaper could have been eviscerated, the flare could be a trap set up by those creatures. Anything was possible. To Barry, that heightened the anxiety. He cursed at his luck that he was forced into a buggy. Unarmed and unarmored, he was an open target for anything looking for a night snack. His rifle couldn't possibly protect him against the swarms; he imagined them with split mouths like mandibles, proboscis dripping in anticipation for a fresh meal.

"This is slaging me off, why the hell do I have to go in with a buggy? There are THINGS out there! And I have a pea shooter! I seen the movies , boys. I know what happens to a guy like me. The jerk, getting his comeuppance by way of horrible mutilation and torture. Yeah ,I get it, Im an frakhole", Barry complained.

"How bout this, for this mission I'll recommend quintuple hazard pay for you. Sounds good?" Ryuki radioed back. "Hey man, this aint no joke. This isn't a game man. My life's on the line out here. You guys sit in your tin cans, I sit out here in a glorified golf cart. Its gotta be at least ten times" Barry replied with an anxious laugh.

"Alright , just keep it together and I'll make it happen" the radio chirped. Ahead, the frantic flare settled down. Ryuki switched to the short range squad channel on the radio. "Can you hear me out there?" he called out.

"Barely sir" the weak voice said. "Uh I think theres something here you guys need to see" .

They reached the wreckage and a few hundred meters away was Reaper, sitting on the ground with his arms folded over his chest. Ryuki quickly disembarked his mech , with Ross in tow , while Barry stood next to his buggy with his rifle. They prepared him for hypothermia treatment, tossing an insulating blanket over him as they strapped him to a gurney.

They loaded him up into the warm flight deck of Ryuki's mech, with Ross using his own for a makeshift elevator. Before he could close the hatch, Reaper spoke. "Toss a beacon in there, youre gonna wanna come back. Something there you wanna see", he said with a weak voice. "Alright pal, I got it" he replied then tossed a marker beacon out.

.


	10. Chapter 10

The drive back to base was long,dreary and boring. The featureless terrain rolled on and on , with only a small icy outcropping here and there to break the doldrums. A bag of saline hung from above Reaper's stretcher with the injection port freshly used for a dose of pleasing morphine. The edge it gave him made his trip more bearable. With the light playing against the ice, lighting up the landscape like a chandelier, it certainly looked spectacular to him. For that short time, the place didn't seem so bad to him.

When the quakes came back though, he wished he had some more morphine. Ross kept his attention split on the road ahead and on his patient. The aftershock frequency had increased , cracks were appearing and shards of ice rising up in a mist of water. "Cap, this place isnt going to last. We gotta pack up the moment we get there and get to that tunnel" he radioed.

Ryuki's hand was sweating. The controller arms had grown moist from his hand. It wasn't the quakes that worried him. That tunnel , it could either be what saves them or what kills them. Crumbling ice was dangerous enough but at least he knew to expect them. An ominous light at the end of an ice strewn tunnel was not so comforting.

The aftershocks continued until they reached the was odd that it stopped, Ryuki thought. There was no time though to dwell on it. The order was already radioed; the camp was packed up and ready by the time they returned. One last check of the elevator was made. The steel pylons and girders showed signs of heavy strain. Only a matter of time before it collapsed outright.

The armored flight decks of their mechs the replaced the open cabins of the buggy's didn't seem to afford any safety to Ryuki. It seemed either were equally vulnerable to whatever lurked in the darkness. And in the end, they wouldn't even have that, Ryuki thought.

A slow ping of the heads up map revealed the direction of the marker. The green dot of the beacon blinked as it transmitted out. Two of the mechs needed to be at a distance from each other, their computers triangulating the beacon's location and relaying out to the others. Instinctively , the formed a V formation as they travelled across the tundra.

Thermal scopes revealed long, winding tunnels under them ,still warm from the the stubby ,slick arms that created them. They twined together, bundled up like cables ,all heading for the same place. That tunnel. That tunnel was a path into the snake pit. It was a trap waiting to be set off. Or it could be the way out,off this frozen pile.

Everyone checked their systems incessantly. Check, re-check ,check again, check the guidance modules, check the fire control computers, check the fuel gages , check, confirm ,re-check ,check to make sure that the autopilot was functioning and not leading them into a solid wall. Check that a round is chambered in the pistol, just in case. No one said it, but everyone thought it. Just in case it comes to that.

They closed in on the tunnel , their thermoptics seeing a blazing fire ahead of them. The ice wall hid a massive structure, its silhouette marked by the dim blue gradients of transient heat sources. It sat there like an ancient monument , maybe built by the creatures that scurried under them.

But why a tunnel? These things dug underground so easily it almost looked like they were swimming through the solid ice. They don't need above ground tunnels. Then again, with every trembling quake , their tunnels surely wouldn't last either. That must be why those entwined burrows all stretched toward that solid piece of work idling in the distance, to get to safety.. Perhaps, its their way off this crumbling frozen ball. Or they might just be trouble makers.

Still, that tunnel had no perceivable purpose. There weren't any signs of recent use other then Reaper's impromptu shelter. That light too , what was it? Ryuki imagined a black shapeless horror waiting behind that light. Its mass of flesh much like the possesed warmachines they found in the hanger.

Its skinless sinew squirming with every muscle twitch, just waiting for prey. Gnashing teeth and an endlessly barbed tongue licking up the tiny morsels of its previous meal. In the shadows, there really wasn't any way to tell it wasn't a monstrosity waiting for them.

It was the klaxon of the unknown ,that tiny thought that seemed to ring like a bad case of tinnitus. It was always there, nagging, squirming ,antagnoizing. Waitingin the gaps of memory , wedging anxiety whenever a doubt was raised. What was that sound? That was the unknown filling the mind with fear. What was that flash of light? It was the shadows jostling for the kill.

Ryuki could hear it in their voices, the fear of the the undecipherable. The slight quiver when they spoke of what the structure was, the tremble in their speech when they tried to explain the things they saw. No doubt their foreheads were dripping from the cold air buffeting their warm bodies and anxious breathing.

They passed the horizon and were in viewing distance of the beacon. A red light mounted to its end pipped steadily though the light seemed to be absorbed wholly by the ice,making it seem like a dot against the darkness. Cracks had formed a web around the entrance , making it seem like a path into a spider's lair. Wolf spiders would build lairs that were hidden from sight to ambush prey as they walked past. A mental note for Ryuki.

Not much could be done about the equipment. Most of it would have to be left behind. The base was redeployed, just so there was some kind of fortification to hold their gear. And just in case something decided to snoop around. The deployable autoturrets were tossed out. Their bodies expanded onto tripods and their turrets lifted off the ground on telescoping masts. Each sported a compound eye, with its red irises looking eerily menacing.

They hastily tossed their armored vests over their arctic uniforms. Their instinctive preparation followed with armor plates fitted into carriers , their holsters strapped tight to their legs and ammo bandoliers stuffed with magazines and plastic explosives. At least they got to the helmets. Worn under their hoods, the sealed plasteel headgear looked like death masks from an otherworldly funeral. Two round eyes sat on the face plates with a dim red glow spilling out. Barry quipped about yetis , no one laughed.

A tense few moments passed as they wondered who would take the first step over the threshold. Ryuki, still setting up his rifle sights, walked passed them without looking."Alright lets move in", he said as he shifted his view to the tunnel.

They didn't notice his anxiety. His eyes focused onto the floor in front of him, trying to avoid first sight with whatever was at the other end. He kept chiding himself over this hidden cowardice. Your their leader, face the path that they're afraid to take alone. You have to do this or they'll see it as a sign of trouble. Ryuki kept talking in his mind , ignoring the quiet chatter behind them.

None of the others noticed Ryuki's forced gaze. They looked at the walls, marveling at the clean, almost mechanically carved walls. Not a single claw mark in sight. Those creatures couldn't have done it. Something that could stand up right and use its hands freely had to build it. As amazing as it was to see such a structure so far away from civilization , an equally terrifying image began to develop in their minds. The existence of the cargo-lift was evidence that someone was using it. But with no signs of any kind of human presence, only a few possibilities remained. Almost all of which were disastrous if true.

The ice seemed to receded as they approached the end of the tunnel. A gust of warm air passed them, with the hot air mixing with the cold surface of their visors, leaving behind a mist of obscuring condensation. Warm air was slowly filling up their suits, making their sweaty bodies stick to their clothing. A bright light ,still seemingly a kilometer away , kept getting brighter as they approached it.

Puddles of steaming water sat inside mushy craters of ice. Icicles on the roof of the tunnel dripped water like stalactites in a cave. In fact, the entire tunnel seemed to just be leading to a massive cave. Sound seemed to echo off the walls and travel far , like a deep cavern. It made their voices alien and disturbing , giving their thoughts a tinge of paranoia. Sure it would have been obvious that it was just their speech being reflected back. But the helmets were thick and the reverb oddly loud. Only a foolhardy soldier wouldn't consider what was talking back.

At the end of the tunnel, a grand chamber opened up to them. The walls were sweating, the heat lifting up from the ground from cracks and vents in the of have melted ice regularly fell from the ceiling. The walls seemed to slowly flow down to the ground It all seemed too unstable to last long.

And still the darkness seemed to consume everything. The light, they found out , was a flood lamp running on a portable fuel cell. The area seemed to have been in use only a short time before they arrived. Yet again though no footprints. Maybe the prints melted along with the ice, though that still didnt explain why there were no marks anywhere.

"Well, looks like we need to venture deeper. Anyone have anything to they need to do or say before we go in? Doesnt look like we'll be coming back this way any time soon", Ryuki said over the radio. The others stood limp, exhausted and tired from the rapid change in temperature and the consequent stickiness from their sweat. "I got one thing to say", Barry radioed. "Lets not wander away , thats how these kinds of movies start off".

Warm drops of water met the surface of reinforced metal of whatever it was that was buried in the ice, plunking as they bounced off and into the floor.. Much of the cavern looked on the verge of melting away. There were vents of steam popping up out of every crevice , like a caldera of a capped volcano. Hot steam, enough to make some permanent scars. The heat source wasn't obvious but the intensity of the steam meant it was very powerful.

A short walk from the mouth of the cavern , they reached a shear wall of greyish blue metal. Karin tapped on it, looking for any sign of hollowed out spaces , only finding that the solid hide of the structure was much more than any bunker she had seen. No luck finding a place to cut open. That lamp though bothered them, especially Ryuki. Someone must have been here and with no footprints leading out, it meant they were still in there somewhere. The ice was too warm to stay solid long enough to dig out tunnels. So the only other place anyone could have gone to was behind the meters thick armor of this ancient ,yet familiar monolith.

Sheets of ice kept sliding off the side of it, racing down and then shattering once they touched the ground. Footing was difficult to find, with every step the ice seemed to get weaker. The puddles were forming everywhere, and with them the loss of any kind of solid ground.

"If we don't get inside this thing, we might as well get our diving gear" Barry's voice echoed in the cavern.

"I really don't mind swimming if it means not going into this, most probable, death trap" Wasp said as she wiped the condensation off her visor.


	11. Chapter 11

A warm wind flowed through the cavern. In return the cold air crawled on the ground, a creeping mist slowly churned across the cracking ice. Tufts of mist drifted down from the walls alongside the glistening trickle of warm water. And throughout all this , the tremors rumbled below. Deep underneath the ice cracked apart. The thunderous collapse travelled up above ground where the muffled roars only added to the foreboding atmosphere.

As they delved deeper, past the sweating stalagmites and dodging falling chunks of ice, the cavern narrowed into a tunnel. Some time later, it narrowed to the point that they needed to walk single file, backs hunched over. The temptation to get on the floor and just crawl through was indomitable, the only thing keeping them up was the shared belief that everyone else would make sure to point it out.

Their heavy suits grew heavier with water, adding a few kilos to their weight and making it even more difficult to trudge through the melting tundra. Water obscured their view no matter how often they wiped their visors. Condensation built up inside their suits, interfering with holographic displays. Nearly blind, they kept walking, hoping to climb out of the watery malaise.

A blast of hot air pushed them back. As they attempted to brace themselves , another blast nearly knocked them back. The gusts were in rhythm, separated by three seconds of fogged visors before another burst of air rocked them.

Struggling against the columns of air bearing down on them, a nearly inaudible sound passed through their helmets. A whoosh and then a pop. It was low enough to ignore easily but the sound reverberated through their eardrums, adding it to the background noise but overcoming it with its muffled rhythm. At first the whoosh seemed to meld into the sound of their breathing. The pop that followed it sounded a bit like a balloon bursting. Some confused it for the hardened armor on their suits slamming into the ice walls.

Subconsciously , the sounds were familiar. That familiarity soon turned into a conscious discomfort. A lull in the blasts of air allowed them to concentrate on their surroundings. While their hands grasped the walls to support their slipping feet, their ears focused on the background noise that pierced their suits. Soon enough they heard it, the rhythmic beat.

It continued growing louder as the approached the tunnel exit. The tunnel now led them deep into icey crust, with little natural light to be seen. Their suit lamps were nearly useless in the cramped space, making it more difficult to see what was ahead. But they all knew they were coming closer to something. The whooshing pop overcame the constant crackling of snow and ice and became prominent.

What was it, why was it so familiar and why did he feel threatened by it, Ryuki thought. It was incessant , insanely incessant. There was no way to block it out , no barriers to keep it out. Their suit radios were inoperable in the cramped tunnel and with no way to communicate it seemed that the bodies infront of them were just lifeless husks marching to some otherworldy , unnatural and uncaring plane of existance, the tunnel leading them through to the otherside to witness some sort of unspeakable horror. The beating growing louder, now beating like a heart would with a lub and a dub, but the whoosh and the pop stayed.

"Sounds like someone doing an ultrasound" Barry said to himself. He knew it sounded familar for a reason. The military doctor in charge of health discharges scanned his body with one, to check his heart. It was a ploy , trying to get discharged so that he didn't have to follow the rest of the squad into obscurity. It didn't work but they let him keep the recording. The whooshing and the popping. That was the blood flowing through the heart.

He shivered at the thought. His legs trembled. His mind cast visions of blood slopped masses quivering. He could see it , the gory heart pumping , its disjointed form floating above him, pumping his mind full of fear and anxiety. An alien heart, feeding into an alien body, giving it strength to extend its sinewy arms, to protract its claws, to unhinge its jaws, for the pounce. No, it was too big to be something so menial. It was pumping into a mass of blue and pink flesh. Its ridges and folds divided into hemispheres. The alien brain ,controlling all the horrors awaiting them, sitting inside its throne of bone and muscle.

He thought he could feel it, in his mind, suggesting him run. Run away from the madness that awaited him, the transcendental pain that was about to be bestowed on his crew. More images of insanity, the ground now flexing as if alive. Stalks growing out with singular red eyes peering from atop them. Then the mottled husks growing out of the stalks, forming bodies of warped limbs and sprouting like mushrooms from the ground.

No no no, stop thinking that. You're scaring yourself for no reason. This isn't a movie, come on. This isn't the maw into an unimaginably alien world. Its a melting tunnel into the side of a wrecked ship or something. Those things that squirmed underground, they were just ice dolphins or something. The missing researchers were idiots who got themselves killed. Those mechs that smelled like burning flesh were just...

A crack in the facade. He tapped Karin in front of him. A hard swat to her shoulder. Nothing. The armor was too thick, the thermal padding making it difficult to feel anything. He punched her now. She thought he was playing stupid games and decided to ignore him. He told himself that something was wrong.

Maybe running was a good idea. Maybe its not too late. The others, they could be gone already and all he saw were their bodies being carried on by the powered exoskeletons. There was time for an escape he'll go out and get away. He'll get away and then he'll find a place to hide. And wait. Wait for rescue. Or just wait to die.

Karin turned around , saw Barry freaking out. She pulled out her direct line and connected to Reaper in front of her. "Tell Cap that Barry's going through claustrophobia. Tell him that we'll meet up with him once I smack some sense into him" she told him.

Barry shook, a shiver tracing his spine and emerging in the center of his brain. The flashes of visions , the closeness of the walls, it seemed overwhelming. What was real, what was merely an overactive imagination. But it was the sound that was real. "Do you hear that" he asked, his voice cracking from his parched throat. "Yeah, some weird thumping sound. Is that what's getting to you? I'd give you some ear plugs but if we can hear it through our helmets then those wouldn't do much either. I got some anti-anxiety pills, take one", she said as she handed him a package from her harness-pack. He opened up his helmet, letting the biting cold instantly freeze the accumulated sweat on his brow. With one gulp it went down. He drank from the water pouch Karin had gave him. Every last drop went to soothe his throat. For a while after, he felt the fear kept at bay.

The tunnel opened up to a solid wall of metal. It seemed to be the side of a massive structure. The wall seemed to span hundreds of meters but every indication pointed to it extending even further. A thin layer of ice frosted its surface , making the details blurred. Here too the ice melted fast.

A moment of respite from the long harrowing tunnel. They unpacked , setting up a few electric hot plates to warm up food. As they ate, Ryuki inspected the strangely familiar wall. His mind was still fixated on the beating,thumping sound they heard. It seemed to emanate deep underground. And now this wall shows up.

More ice outcroppings spewed heat up into the ceiling, producing a steady drip and drizzle around them. There wasn't a chance to take their suits off, as most of the floor was wet, making any kind of comfort difficult to attain. All they could do was lift their visors up to open their faces to the brutal cold.

The ice sitting on the wall had provided a difficult lens to see through. Behind it he could see faint details and, surprisingly, some color. Against the pale white metal backdrop he spotted what seemed to be red triangles and black bars arranged in a similar fashion as the ships of the Sol Republic.

No, no , that didn't make any sense. What was worrying to Ryuki though was the need to assure himself of that. If this were any place else, he would have disregarded without a single thought. But here, in the depths of an icy graveyard, here it stood out apart from everything else. Here it stood alongside possesed combat mechs, missing researchers and sweltering heat from rushing up from places unknown.

Not now, he couldn't dwell on that. He needed to find a way through. This wall had to have something behind it. There were scientists here, they had to go somewhere. No where else were there even a hint of someone treading the ground. Just here, with the still running spotlights and lamps and a tunnel carved a bit to perfectly.

Wracking his mind, he couldn't figure the puzzle out. Where was this place supposed to lead to? The tunnel seemed to be deliberate, leading them in a single direction with no chance of getting lost. So what was it here that they were supposed to find. Let alone the strange thumping that seemed to reverberate through everything. It was getting to him, driving him to anger, placing a burden on his already tense grip on formality.

He wiped the surface of the wall, the heat from his body jumping out looking for a cold place to infect. The touch broke the ice sheet into large plates. His curiosity took control of his hands, leading him to pull off the pieces.

His mind could barely understand what he saw. The symbols were familiar because they were the same as the ones on the Republic cruisers. The red triangles pointed to armor plate joints, hooks and ports. A nozzle pushed up from the flat surface, waiting for who knows how long for a drop of anti-rad fluid.

Nothing made sense. And further clawing at the ice revealed even fewer answers. The black bars he spotted had long worn away the letters they contained. Not enough remained for any kind of guess. Still the one thing he kept his mind on was the hatch . There had to be one, this room was built around it , he was sure of it.

His behavior spooked the others as they sat around a hot plate eating reconstituted beef soup.

"What the frak is he doing? Its like his scratching an itch or something , but its on that wall" Wasp whispered. They kept eating, the warmth of the food too alluring to let it go to waste. They watched, out of the corner of their eyes, so to not attract the captains attention at their gawking. One by one, they stopped eating and slowly turned to see in full view what seemed to be the first person to descend into madness. None spoke a single word as Ryuki tore at the frosted wall.

The only sound that remained in the chamber was the incessant thumping and Ryuki's scratching. He had pulled his knife out, cutting and scraping at the ice feverishly, like in some kind of delusional state, looking for something that couldn't possibly be there but his mind asserted that there was.

And then he stopped. He looked at the wall and then back to his team. He saw in their eyes a terror that he suppressed in himself. And that reflection stabbed straight into him with a shard of inexplicable fear.


	12. Chapter 12

"It says...it says its SRT Tradewind. Its a Sol Republic cargo ship. I dont know, I dont know", Ryuki repeated to himself. It wasn't just that it was one of theirs. The Tradewind wasn't due to finish construction for another 3 years. It was marked, New Britain , built at the Alleghany shipyard, orbiting Aldebaran . But the Alleghany shipyard was still in transit from its mooring above Terrastria,Nova Sol , in the Gliese dual star system The ship, and consequently everything in it, couldn't exist. Everything to do with it hadn't yet existed. These tiny ,yet significant details, piled up like tiny stones in a glass jar, slowly filling up in his mind dire doubts and disturbing thoughts. And just like glass, tiny logical fractures propagated through his mind. All this time, all he thought he was fighting the darkness and the unknown, the vile bulbous monstrosities, the burrowesr and the quakes. He steeled himself for a confrontation with the disturbed images that floated in his head. Yet this impossible ship was what stopped him. A non existent port of origin. From an era that hadn't existed yet. Filled with elements and artifacts, no doubt aged in the decades this ship lay in the frozen wastelands. A futures death ,staring back at him. Frozen in time,in a past it shouldn't be in. His eyes watered ,tears from fears, rolling down a broken facade.

It was a matter of time before the others felt the tug of horrific curiosity pull them in. The sight of the captain seemingly lose all sense,his eyes darting as if an embolism had exploded in his brain. Their own fears played back to them, as each step they took rewound time in their minds eye to horrors they had already seen. And future horrors waiting, with each pensive step closer. Everyones exhausted thoughts led to exhaustive imaginative creations of the terrible unknown that had seemingly broke the captain.

They say it. The red inverted triangle with the anchor. The star field of Aldebaran inscribed in it, with a streaking white ball of fire traversing it. 2352, three years from now. The bolts and welds were older with rust and scars of conflict ,the paint chipped , showing its age was far more than what its commissioning date would allude to. Each dimple an impact from a micrometeorite or microprojectile. Each gash from a energy lash , each warped plate from the impact of burning plasma, all those battle scars from decades of service.

"What the frak is all that?" Barry mumbled. His fingers traced over the frosted surface, his gloveless hand perspiring onto the hull, the tiny drops of sweat leaving trails behind as the ice recondensed. Karin inspected the symbols and knew immediately why they were wrong. "This can't be possible ,theres no way" she whispered to herself. Before any of this happened, she saw Aleghany station , anchored at the L3 Lagrange point of Terrastria. She watched from the deck of the Unlimited Frontier ,a military cargo ship, she watched its new shipyard extensions installed. It couldn't have built up a ship like this so soon. It didn't as a matter of fact. She knew this ship hadn't even been built yet.

"This is just bull" Karin yelled. "Those stupid frakkers , what were they doing here. Why the frak is this thing here. They leave us behind and they're laughing all the way back to FleetCom. This is a joke, a frakkin stupid joke. They should have frakkin executed us. This aint funny!" she yelled louder. The shrill intonation pushed ajar all grip on formality and decorum. "I had enough of this slag. Im not gonna stand here like a chump, looking at this fake ship. Im gonna find those bastards and rearrange their faces" Reaper coughed , the rage in his voice so coarse that the words burned as he spoke.

What was there to do, Ryuki finally thought. His mind delved into a spiral , deep into the inky void of his subconscious. Those moments seemed to stretch forever but finally shattered upon the walls of his consciousness, releasing him. "Shut the frak up, everyone. Spouting like idiots is not going to solve our problem. This thing is here and there is no doubt about it. Once we find the access hatch, we will be going inside it. That is all. Do not waste your time bickering about impossibilities. We've been through enough to know nothing is impossible. From here on , this is a professional op. You understand?". A rhetorical question, yet the right response was silence. They all nodded their heads, forced back into sanity for at least a bit longer.

The flamethrowers bodies were composed primarily of an accelerant tank and an oversized underslung rifle body. It was a formidable weapon, conjuring firey sprites to melt away its target. Soldiers in the startrooper battalions often used them to burn out bunkers and tunnels. The flames were perfect for burning away oxygen, depriving all of breath. Today though, their targets were much less prone to agonizing screams.

"Side to side , aim for the the frost, dont bother with the thick ice. We're looking for a door about five meters by four meters, with an exterior hatch control. Keep your eyes open" Ryuki shouted. The walls melted , the drip of water turning into streams. Ice broke and fell like thin plate glass. Slowly the surface revealed its scars.

Those scars led them to the prize. A wide hatch, big enough to take a small army , two by two , into the hull. "Wheres the control panel?" someone yelled. There was no sign of one. The hatch was sealed from the other side.

"How the frak did anyone get in there? No controls to open, not even an over-ride. How the frak man?" Barry yelled. A dead end, so to speak. Time was running short , the quakes becoming more frequent, more violent. Their equipment lay open to the weather, the deep chill no doubt slowly destroying the inner workings like a slow infection.

A Sol Republic ship often has hatches designed to be opened from the inside. The situations where they need to be opened from the outside are rare. Security was the major concern, the hatches were built this way. But this wasn't a normal situation. The ship, buried in ice, for what looked to be many years , exposed to water and ice, was not built to live in the cold and wet depths.

"Get the microwelders, pierce the the frame of the hatch. We're going to to flood the seal with water", Ryuki was he doing, the rest wondered. Then a spark of a thought entered into Karin's mind. "We're going to freeze the water once it gets into the seal, and then break the hatch right out" she exclaimed. The others didn't seem to take this statement at face value, but prepared nonetheless. An order was an order, even if they couldn't understand.

Red hot tips of the welders slowly melted its way through. Small smoke trails wafted up from the holes bored into the hull's skin. One by one, they cut into the frame, until the hardened metal skin was peppered with them. Then the water came.

The flamethrowers melted the ceiling to create a waterfall upon the hatch. Water flowed into the frame, into the cracks in the seals and spread through it ,filling every crevice. Now to freeze it. Slabs of ice cut from the tunnel. Stacked atop each other like giant icecubes. Crushed ice was poured over it to cement it together. The wall of ice that once hindered them was now rebuilt, for another purpose.

Now it time would do its work. The cold seeped into the frame, turning the channels of water into icy veins. Water expanded to take the its solid state , straining the the frame. The incompressible fluid was undaunted , no technology could halt its strength. Cold fingers wormed their way into the water, the water turning to ice almost instantly. With no source of heat to keep the freezing air away , the ice grew into solid crystals rapidly. The first cracks came as the sound of whining metal. Then the frame buckled , the metal began to bulge with ice.

A thin hairline crack appeared at the edge of the hatch-frame. Icy crystals blossomed out like slivers of diamonds. Light refracted off them into a shower of tiny intense points as their flashlights illuminated the surface. Another hairline crack formed, this one bulging out from between the armored plates that surrounded the hatch. The bolts buckled and broken to bits , years of deep freeze making them too weak to withstand the expanding ice.

When the series of cracking pops pierced through the hatch, a spray of slush erupted from the seams. The hatch jolted a bit but it was still firmly in place. Ice continued to grow out like tendrils, the water still freezing over. Several pops , emanating from the other side of the door escaped through the cracks still forming in the hatch. The hatch lurched slightly. A sudden burst from the other side pushed the hatch out off its hinge. Ice shards burst out from the gaps in the frame until the hatch finally was forced open.

A warm wind flowed out with misty trails swirling out of the open hatch. Ryuki's visor fogged up with the hot air. No amount of rubbing could remove the haze. A few others swore at the wind haplessly.

After the fruitless insults against the uncaring wave of heated air , they peered into the hatch to find the deck lights were dimmed but still functional. They climbed in with their pack-rifles unfolded and armed. They kept their suit-lights on, hoping that the shadows would recoil enough to reveal the dark corners in which lurkers may hide.

The musty air was full of dust and floating debris. The lower gravity of the planetoid turned even bolts and screws into floating dust mites with some of the magnetized parts clumping together like white blood cells in the process of killing invaders. These balls of detritus were large enough to dent their suits but with so many of them floating about it made evading them more difficult.

Karin, while dodging larger bits floating past her, spotted the shadow of something ahead lying on the floor. She motioned to the others to stop and moved through the small crowd towards the artifact. The shadow shrunk as she closed in on it and slowly the light revealed the unmistakable shoe prints that headed deeper into the ship.

Ryuki knew it. The researchers had to have come through here. They must have sealed the hatch shut, he thought. "Lets pick up the pace and find these clowns" he said through the suit speaker. With no boogeymen in sight they all holstered their pack-rifles.

"How about we look for the cargo hatch first, so we can bring our valuable possessions in?" Barry asked. A good question Ryuki thought. It was true that they left behind very valuable tools. After encountering the corrupted mechs in the hangar, it would be best to bring in as much of their armor as possible, in case more showed up.

A dilemma was now before him. Split up to double the pace of the search, or stay together and not disappear silently into the shadows. "And just like in the movies, here we are, a dim corridor, and two objectives" Reaper spoke through his speaker. Barry nodded in agreement the best he could in his obtuse vitality suit.

"We are trained soldiers. And we have a limited amount of time before we all starve to death. So, we'll have to do exactly what you are worried we'll do. I hope you all trust yourselves enough to know how to handle an unknown situation" ,Ryuki spoke.

"This line is the threshold" he said while sweeping his feet across the ground in front of him. "Once we pass over this, we're behind enemy lines. Remember your training and we will all make it out of this alive. If you turn into sacks of blubbering adipose tissue, I will kick your asses back into order. Understood?" he yelled. His little motivation speech, though harsh , still held true to the soldiers. They were trained. They would survive.

As long as the shadows remained just darkened corners.


	13. Chapter 13

The icy breath that licked the floors with sleet parted to reveal the sturdy steel platforms that stretched through the bulkhead. Ribbed steel girders, equally spaced with a uniform coating of dust, lined the roof and walls. No lights were on, not even emergency strobes. The power drain must have been used for something though but the state of the ship left the team questioning what was being powered if not the ship.

The footprints continued on deeper into the darkened corridor. The ribbing left jet black shadows that moved as they did, startling the imaginative Reaper, his mind already receptive to the idea of bogeymen hiding in at the periphery of his senses. Chilled air still followed them inward with the deep freeze haunting their footprints.

Every hatch they passed was tested with spin of the hatch lock and a hard kick to see if they could gain access to the otherside. No luck, the ice had thoroughly permeated through the gears and joints ,freezing them in place. Using the flamethrowers would have been a terrible idea inside the cramped quarters of the corridor. Every hatch was the same, frozen shut. The footprints continued going through. It seemed as if the scientists knew where they were going , never seeming to stop to check hatches or door panels. Odd, very odd. Scientists usually stick around to study such an amazing discovery. They would take the time to investigate. Not here though. It was enough to cause Ryuki to consider more nefarious plans were in mind when the scientists entered. Perhaps they even knew exactly what to look for. Ryuki knew that the couldn't be right. No one was ever in here until now,so there couldn't be any way that they knew what was here. Indeed, it made no sense to Ryuki. Which left only disturbing possibilities of what happened to the science team.

Ryuki surmised that they walked at least a kilometer before the reached an open hatch. That wasn't right, the ship couldn't have been that wide. Karin claimed that the ship couldn't be more than 500 meters wide and only the largest battlecarriers were ever that big. The corridors didn't even hint at the true size of the ship as each section was the same as the previous ,the ship seemingly repeating the same hatches over and over again.

The hatch was nondescript and the only difference to it was that it was slightly ajar. Opening it revealed a junction with four corridors leading into different directions. "Frak, you know what this means" Barry commented. It would be unwise to split up in such a vast vessel. With the lack of long distance communications , they could all disappear into the depths to never reappear. "Alright, ten minutes in then ten minutes out, we meet back here in twenty. Make sure you use your neon tracers and glow sticks. Use the tracers to leave a trail for yourselves."

Ryuki took the farthest tunnel on his own. The others splint into three teams. When they asked why he went alone,he flipped the ignition latch on his flamethrower,lighting the blue flame at the toothy maw of the launcher. He nodded his head and disappeared into the dark corridor. No one thought to stop one wished to join him. "If Im not here when you get back, Barry takes command".

They left the junction without a word with their minds firmly concentrating on survival. But what was Ryuki thinking of while wading through the darkness ,why go alone?

He was preoccupied. Survival had been pushed from the forefront. Instead his thoughts were swirling around the hull of the ship. Why? Why was it here? He couldn't understand it. It shouldn't even exist. But its here and perhaps in its travels through unknown space,it brought with it something that latched onto it, at the fringes of the universe. Perhaps they waited just outside of existence, capturing this ship to host their corporeal bodies and traveling to where they dont belong. What else could explain the horrid bio-corrupted composites that haunted the hangar? No no no, that wasn't right, Ryuki couldn't believe what he was thinking. There isn't something outside trying to peek in and this vessel wasn't its fiery chariot. The Tradewind could have fell into a wormhole , while on routine resupply duty, and then deposited into the thick ice crust of this planetoid.

Of course, it made sense. Wormholes were theoretically possible. Dark intelligences at the edges of the universe, not possible at all. Why would they even exist? No reason. A wormhole has a reason to exist, according to the standard model of astrophysics. It was completely possible. Xenos and malicious lifeforms have no reason to exist. At all.

It was a comforting thought. Only for a while. Science only could explain what can be seen. And these things? No ones seen them except for Ryuki and his team. To the universe, none of this exist. The universe doesn't care to bother even investigating ifit was even possible for this ship, these creatures and these people ,to exist. To the scientists ,there was nothing to explain since there was nothing to be seen.

So this unknown void, a place that fell through human consciousness, this place that existed only for Ryuki to see, it wasn't real at all. It was home sickness and disorganized commanding officers that put them in this position. Those mechs that just walked on their own, those were glitches, that blood was just battery fluid.

The Zephyr combat frame does not use batteries. Its power source is a 300 megawatt microfusion reactor, supplemented by a ten cell emergency fuel cell with thirty thousand kilowatt-hours of power. The power system was directly connected to the life support systems. To prevent it falling into enemy hands, the reactor fused its coolant lines when the life support failed. The Zephyrs cannot run when the life-support systems have failed. It cannot power itself.

It should not pulsate with oozing fluid. Its body does not quiver upon being shot. It is a machine. It cannot do what they saw.

Ryuki's suit light dimmed, the manually charged battery slowly draining. The darkness seemed to encroach on his peripheral vision. Tiny fragments of the shadows nipped at his heels , the thin tendrils of the night wriggling in anticipation for the flashlight to die. His eyes darted but his vision was unfocused. His mind was clouded with visions of malicious nothingness. His eyes were searching for what it couldn't see.

The light finally died as he crossed the threshold into the cargo bay. Dim yellow warning lights strobed. The shadows convulsed under the waning flashes. Ryuki's eyes focused into infinity. The walls seemed to spread out , then expand before his eyes. Details sharpened, individual bolts and welds came into view as if they grew in size or under a microscope. The walls rushed away from him, the sudden visual shift causing vertigo to overtake his sense of balance.

As the world seemed to just disappear away from him , cold fingers slipped under his shirt. The sweat running down his sides had met sprites of cold air. The freezing touch jostled his mind back into reality. His lethargy was shaken out by the shivers that ran up and down his spine.

He looked again. The walls stood motionless. The ceiling was still above him and the floor still solidly underneath. Discomfort overtook the sense of dread as his inner-suit absorbed the rivers of sweat that snaked along his skin. No memories, none at all ,of the last few minutes. His mind was completely blank, the traumatic visions of oblivion seemingly never happening. No memories at all of the last few minutes.

The timer had rang three hours ago. It was a psychotic break. Strange though that it left him standing. Three hours of walking into the unknown,immersed in an ocean of shadows. Where is this, it didn't matter. There was no way he would get back. The strobes flickered in the distance, casting rays onto scaffolding and mobile stairs.

He took a few moments to recompose and recharge his flashlight. The crank on the flashlight body was stiff , each rotation taking more strength than expected. A few more turns and the red battery indicator turned green. His breath floated past the shaft of light , sparkling in the darkness.

With the flashlight attached to his folding machine pistol ,he swept the bay looking for clues to where he brought himself to in his waking dream.

A pyramid of crates , with the Sol Invictus stamped on them, the coat of arms of the Sol Republic. Empty hangars , where the aerospace fighters would be stored. Gurneys and cranes next to Battle Frame alcoves. Racks upon empty missile racks. Its as if the entire bay was stripped of all valuables. Spots where the dust was thinner, thats where the contraband had once been. Could it be, the scientists weren't here for archaeological insights? They were raiders, studying newly won spoils of war. It made sense, the freight elevator was much too big for any normal cargo.

So where did the contents of this cargo bay go? Nothing other than possesed robots were in the sub-hangar. The science complex was too small to store anything. So where? The ships. They left none behind. Everything they took were on them. And when they left ,they had no space for Ryuki's team.

While the idea of being left behind with no way to escape was terrifying, there was something more disturbing. Why? The base crew seemed lethargic but anyone would be in a permanent winter scientists seemed stereotypical shut-ins, their source of fun could have been spending hours looking at agar dishes, plotting out the projected population growth of a streptococcus colony.

This ship wasn't the end of this strange nightmare. Something more is going on , something far away from here, something more alien than a time traveling starship filled with sinewy mechanical was all the time in the world ,though,to find out the answer to the question.

His bearings slowly came back to him as he paced aimlessly through the deserted belly of the ship. A solid green light, off to the other side of the hold, caught his attention. He saw it , at the far end, a small room set off from the mech alcoves. A control room.

That was it, the way out. There had to be a hatch control for the cargo bay. The walls weren't ordinary, they retracted. Huge cargos would travel through wide berths , wide enough for assault spider walkers. The panel glowed when he reached it. There was no dust on it.

It made complete sense. Taking the contents of an entire cargo hold would be much easier if the bay doors were open. None of them had seen a hint of a cargo door since all evidence of it existing was buried under ice. Whatever work was done , all tracers were paved over by solid ice.

He tapped the panel waking it from its sleep mode. A series of green triangles swept through the lightened panel, followed by status indicators for hydraulics of the doors. A warning hologram popped up in front of him, that the structural integrity of the actuators was compromised. The ice must have infiltrated into the joints, possibly cracking them apart . There was nothing he could do about it though, he was no engineer, no matter how much his mother tried to persuade him. Those years studying math and physics, lonely years that kept him away from friends, had left a bad impression on him. It was doubly so when the only people he did interact with him were actively plotting to sabotage his projects and assignments. The high tension environment, not unlike the one he was in now, was distasteful. Not because of the anxiety or fear of failure but because of the cutthroats that surrounded him. They all had a singular goal and that goal did not include working as a team. It finally broke, his will to continue his studies, when his team members on a project to develop a low cost energy generation system decided that their grades would do better if the competition had been forced to quit. Idiotic as that thought was, the maliciousness that these people exuded had clouded reason. He was forced to finish the project on his own with the end result being his success and the failure of his backstabbing team members.

The memory flashed, instantly ,of that project. He had a team and it was his job to assure their safety. And he knew his lancemates felt the same about each other. That mutual camaraderie was what kept him going through boot camp and the deep void of space. He pressed a few floating symbols. The ferrofluid hydraulics began to whir. The bay door cracked open just a bit with icy water spraying into the cargo hold. Where it was opening to didn't matter. It was his path back to his team.


	14. Chapter 14

[Dear readers, please provide any comments you have about this story. I would greatly appreciate it]

The bay doors shuttered with strength as they tried to shake off the thick layers of ice that accumulated over them. Load bearing joints wheezed under the weight of the frost. A loud boom swept through the cargo hold when a large slab slammed into the ground. Sparks erupted from between the actuators as the gears struggled to move.

It opened slowly , almost sickly , like age had worn away at the pistons and cams that made up the limbs of the actuators. The whine of steel bend under pressure sounded oddly like an old man moaning under the weight of decades of life. The reinforcing girders that kept the door mechanisms in place began to compress. Like osteoporosis had eaten away at it.

How many years did this thing stay buried here? Everything seemed to just crumple under as if the metal had fatigued from decades of non-maintenance. How exactly did the raiders sack the hull if the entire ship was only a few nudges from collapsing into itself?

The door slowed down against a frozen embankment. No amount of force would widen the gap. But it was enough of an opening to climb out through. At the least it would bring him back outside. If the team had done its duty ,they would have retreated the the camp at the mouth of the tunnel they came in.

The mobile ladder platform would do very well as a ladder. If it were still functional, which would be incredibly strange, it would be able to extend all the way through the gap. It could be that easy, Ryuki considered. There hadn't been much good luck at all , a change would be appreciated. In the midst of a ship aged far longer than it existed, something easy would be quite an event to celebrate.

The door of the mobile platform was frozen shut. The flamethrower was a simple solution. With the door set ablaze,it was a matter of seconds before it defrosted. The door though couldn't resist the heat. It fell off its hinges and dropped with the loud smash.

Inside the seats were solid as rock. The steering wheel was stuck too, the entire dashboard glistening under the frozen facade. He punched the dashboard to see how hard it was. He yelled as his hand swelled with pain.

A yellow ignition button was covered under the ice. With his knife he chipped away at it till the ice broke apart ,revealing the depressed button. Off to the right of the steering column , the faint glow of a battery indicator just barely pierced through the icy stratum. Enough ambient light had activated the solar cells in the display. Just as he thought, the batteries were dead. Why would they have been working anyway? The ship could have been buried for centuries , there was never even a possibility that anything in it would work. Ryuki punched the dashboard again in anger. "What kind of idiot am I to think this would have worked?" he said to himself.

Once out of the car cabin, he tossed his empty flamer cell onto the ground. Not enough fuel in it to melt the ice jamming the door. He watched it roll across the floor and keep rolling till it hit the bay door. He realized the ship was tilted at a slight angle. His mind,desperate for solutions, found it in the midst of anger.

He climbed back into the car and found the parking brake still engaged. He had not enough strength to push it down, his body growing tired from the cold. Pulling out his rifle, he grasped it by the barrel, aiming the stock down at the brake. Smashing once wasn't enough. Another bash. The lever moved slightly. Another one and it moved a bit more. One more smash, with all the energy he had left, struck down on the obstinate brake handle. The ice that covered it shattered as it smacked down into the release position.

Future engineering revolutions would have little impact on what he felt. The wheels began to turn. Even after the environment had frozen it in place, the wheels budged. A marvel of antiquated technology, the axles rotated and now the car slowly travelled towards the door.

He jumped out of the car and stood watching it make its slow and shallow descent. It made a soft impact. Still the ladder was not tall enough to reach the gap. Something else was needed to make the final few meters.

Ryuki turned back and walked towards the entrance. Stacks of empty crates sat next to the hatchway. He pushed one off the stack with his rifle butt to see how sturdy it was. While it did splinter, the crate still remained in one piece. A few kicks and it seemed to hold up well enough for what he wanted.

Hunger started to encroach on this thoughts. The grumbling in his belly came first. Then the pain. He wondered how long it would take till his stomach contracted to a quarter of its size. Maybe,if he waited long enough, the pain would go away.

Snap out of it , he told himself. It was those few moments of quiet labor that let his mind wander. It was tempting, the idea to end it right there. His thoughts strayed towards it when left alone. He reconciled with the thoughts by insulting himself. Weak, cowardly ,easy. A commander would not leave his soldiers so easily. They counted on him and leaving now would betray all the trust they had for him. This was no longer about him getting out. His team, waiting for him, he couldn't give up. For them, he needed to continue. His orders brought them to this ice cage , he would lead them out.

Nearby he found a tactical welding torch, lying ontop of a pile of scrap metal and refuse. Shaking it revealed the gas tank empty, the rattling noise just the steel pipette knocking against the tank. He unholstered the flamethrower and tapped the fuel tank attached to it. Half full, it seemed.

A pile of oily rags and cardboard sat piled next to him. Before transferring the fuel , he decided to make use of the flamer one more time. He piled the rags into an empty fuel drum and topped it off with a few metal plates for a makeshift grill. He aimed the flamer down into the drum with the blast guard fully .The pile burst into flames when he lit it up. The oily rags must have been soaked in diesel gas for years , the vapors trapped in their fibers until Ryuki set them free with a purifying flame.

He held his hands against the crackling heat that unfurled from the blaze. The warmth travelled up his arms followed by the goosebumps as the chilled skin rapidly heated. He could feel life slowly pouring back into him, flowing over his chest and down his back. His pale face soon brightened and reddened. The hunger abated as he soaked up his nourishment.

With the fire still burning behind him, he disconnected the fuel cannister from the flamer receptacle. He opened up the fuel tank from the torch to see if the tool would accept his flamer tank. No, it would have been too easy. The receptacle was much smaller than the cannister.

He slowly poured the fuel into the torch can , making sure not to spill any fuel. Once the tank was full he snapped it back into the torch. Striking a match against the pilot light was enough to spark it back to life.

He took the metal plates and began to weld them into a T shape. Sparks jumped from the metal and danced on the floors as he worked through the plates. Licks of fire leaped up from the torch , the blazing hearth behind him projecting his shadow against the rusted walls of the bay. As his shadow-self jittered against the wall, the torch began to slowly weaken. The blue flame at the tip shrank and changed to a pale yellow as the fumes of the leftover fuel escaped through the nozzle.

The last flames of life left the torch , all the fuel was gone but the steel T was finished.A few bits of flame was all it was needed to melt through the bottom of the T, making the hole for the rope to pass through.

He tied the rope into the T. The anchor would pass through the overhead girders then drop down back to the ground. With the anchor he proceeded to tie it to the mobile staircase. The other end he tied to a crate. He headed back to the stairs and began to pull on the rope. His arms hurt with every pull, his hands weakly gripping the rope and holding on with every last bit of strength left. The low oxygen levels prompted his muscles to produce lactic acid, making every pull painful.

When his body could take no longer, he wrapped his end of the rope around the anchor as quickly as his tired body let him. When his body gave out , the crate was high above him. Success did not bring any reprieve from the hunger pangs or his burning muscles. He crawled up the stairs towards the crate. At the top he pulled on the crate towards the stair platform. A quick slash from his knife freed the crate to land hard on top of him. The momentary dizziness gave way but now the pain burned through his entire body.

He pulled on the crate as he pushed himself along the platform with his legs. Thick splinters from the crate dug into his glove leaving him with the faint sensation that daggers were scratching at his hands. Closer to the bay door, he began pushing it with his back as he sat on the platform. When the crate stopped moving he knew it finally hit the door.

He pulled himself up onto the crate .He pulled himself up till his eyes could see through the gap. The darkness shrouded the ground leaving only the void to look back at him. He realized that the drop was too far down. He remembered the last time he was able to make the jump. Years before he became a pilot, he was the tech sergeant for an advance recon team. His job was to mark out targets and paths for the combat frame battalions. One mission was deep in valley at the edge of a desert. A dust storm had settled down on the valley, making visibility as bad as in the ice cavern. His goggles became caked with sand and dirt , his rebreather slowly clogging up. His team had ran for a cavern to hide from the storm but he had taken a chance and found an ammo depot deep in the valley. As he lay the the target beacons near the outpost, the storm strengthened. A wall dust was racing through the valley. He knew that the storm would sweep him into oblivion if he could not find shelter.

He ran hard , his breathing quickened and the air slowly choked from his rebreather. The dust had thoroughly covered the filters, his vision nearly completely obscured by dirt. He ran until he felt the ground under him weaken. A sudden stop before reaching a shear drop. Wiping away the sand from his goggles revealed the chasm. Through it ran a river. He leaped , knowing it would lead to sea and back to his teams waiting black-ops cruiser. He would have been arrested for desertion if he had not placed the beacons while his team cowered. Strange , he thought. Punishment for a job well done.

Back down he went, to retrieve the rope. The anchor stayed firmly on the fender of the mobile ladder platform. The other end he tossed out the gap. He waited, hoping the strength would return to him . He closed his eyes and laid his hands on the rope.


	15. Chapter 15

He held the rope tightly , his hands clasped around them like vises and took the first step out. His left foot dangled for a moment before he picked his right foot off the ground. With his legs wrapped around the the rope, he slowly climbed down.

As he climbed down, he could feel the heat draw out of his body, the fleeting warmth leaving as quickly as they arrived. The dark ,cold void sucked the remenants of the blazing fire from his arms and the intersection between his skin and the unforgiving environment a layer of cold sweat formed. His body quickly cooled and the sudden changed attacked his body with blunt force. Coughing, sneezing and a sinus pain that was beyond anything he felt before.

He quickly lost the strength to hold on. As his hands slipped, he wondered if he would die instantly or slowly freeze to death once he hit the ground. He landed on his back after falling a few feet. Stinging pain jammed between his ribs while a searing heat seemed to light his back on fire.

Not enough strength in his arms or legs to pick himself up. Dizzying headaches crumpled his body and his limbs burned as if hot knives speared his flesh. He tossed himself onto his belly. The ribs sprung in red hot agony . Moving his arms made his chest spasm. Huffing and coughing, he placed one hand under him and propped himself on his elbow. He began crawling, one elbow at a time, dragging his legs with him.

It only seemed like a few minutes before he lost consciousness as the red hot pokers of agony overtook him. His last thought was one of deprecation. What's the point in doing any of this? Death was the one surety in everything he did.

He felt hands grabbing him. Perhaps Death's agents had come to ferry him to oblivion. Perhaps Life, in her uncaring gaze, thought nothing of his plight. It would be odd then that Death was franticly carrying him, all his attention cast onto a failed soldier that Lady Life had tossed aside like a cheap bottle of liquor.

They were aggressive, those hands. Roughing him up, slapping his face and tearing at his clothing. Valhala had shunned him, sending his body and soul to Hel, to be forever shamed. A hot liquid splashed into his face, seeped into his eyes and forced them open. Shadowy figures stood beside him ,their forms warped by the water in his eyes. Dull sounds struck his skull like tiny hammers.

Then he heard his name. Someone calling him, from far voice too faded to discern any specific words other than his name. It came closer, growing sharper and clearer. It repeated his name, again and again but still he couldn't understand what it was asking. Each time it spoke, his head swelled. The maddening sensation of his brain being slowly crushed grew stronger with every shout of his name. The shadows were torturing him. It was the Crimson Falcons. They caught him. Damn bastards nearly killed his entire team on New Europa in the Kepler system. Insurgents, blood thirsty but even worse they were desperate. In their fight for freedom and contraband they had stumbled upon his recon team's platoon of tactical frames. Though to the untrained, the frames would look menacing, to those who had seen and fought them before the tactical frames were merely oversized soldiers. The Europa First insurgents did not fear them but were envious of their machines. At night, while his team slept in their jungle camp, the Europans attacked. They were ill prepared and lost handily but not without striking a critical blow. In Ryuki's haste to secure the frames and the secrets they held, he had let one of his own be captured. No doubt, he was tortured before dying. And now they were back from him. Those menacing shadows won't gain anything without a fight.

He was mumbling. Delirium had set in. The delusions were awfully strong. Both Barry and Ross had difficulty keeping him down. He shot his hand up into the air, his hand gripping an invisible gun. The trigger finger spasmed, as if unloading the entire magazine of the hallucinatory gun.

Now he yelled , garbled and enraged. Swinging his arm as he slowly regained control of his body. In that space between waking and dreaming, he was having a down right brutal battle. His hallucinations assaulted him and he fought back with kicks and punches. One punch landed on Barry's neck , a kick knocked over the tub of hot water simmering near his cot.

Gnashed teeth bared, like a wounded animal preparing its death stroke. Karin rushed in to the tent with a set of straps to restrain him. As they fought the supernaturally strong captain, Karin weaved the straps around his arms and legs, finally securing them to floor with heavy posts drilled into the ground.

Once consciousness began to return, the captain regained a modicum of self awareness. His punches weakened and the foam in his mouth fizzled. His eyes finally flickered on. He moaned in pain , his body aching from hypothermia and welts from falling back first. Dehydration had withered his brain , making the headache worse. His parched lips could only say "water".

He tried to stand up but the straps kept him firmly in place. The faces still blurry but he could tell they were friendly. "Can I stand up ?" he asked. They quickly undid the straps and brought him a canteen of water. The cold water seemed to burn his dry tongue. The water made his belly felt terrible but soon his body temperature warmed up enough to make the ice cubes in his stomach to melt.

"When did you find me" he asked his team. Barry stepped forward,and sat on the cot next to the captain. "Sir, its been 5 hours since you went in. After 30 minutes we headed back to the camp. We posted a sentry just in case you came back. It wasn't until we started tracking sound of machinery that we found you. The bay doors were grinding gears loud enough to hear it from a few kilometers away. When we got to the source of sound we found you lying crumpled on the ground. You were going into shock and in this kind of temperature that would have a death sentence.

"Did you see it?" he asked.

"The bay door? Yeah. I think we can pry it open with the winch on the Thunderhammer. We found something else though while you were gone. We pointed our thermal imagers straight down into the ground to see if we can spot some of those ice seals, or whatever they are. We found a source of heat, deep really deep in the ground. Considering the ship next to us, we could only guess that the engines are on. Sir, someone is in there. And I think they're trying to get this thing off the ground".

"Just great, its gotta be those damn robo-parasites that we found earlier. Whatever the hell they intend to do, I want to make sure they die trying it. If we aren't getting out of here, they aren't either. Alright, suit up and head..." he couldn't finish. Dehydration. Consciousness evaded him once he stood up. Too quick, his body wasn't prepared for the change in blood pressure. Coupled with his weakened state, the blood flow was too little to supply his hungry mind. His body went limp but was caught before hitting the ground. "Sir, you're going to need to lie down for awhile. You won't be doing anything", Barry said. He lifted the captains body onto the cot and unfurled a solar blanket over him. "Fine, prep the Thunderhammer for action. You don't need me to do that right?" he asked weakly.

It was nearly 30 meters tall and 50 meters long. Four giant legs, two on each side of the Thunderhammer's body. Each leg was made of three segments, with the lowest segment featuring oversized tank treads for high mobility while the upper segment attached to the body through gimbal joints. What would be its head was a giant double barrelled railgun turret. On its back was a crane and a giant 200 millimeter Groundthumper cannon, suitable for razing small cities. On a smaler turret on the forward section was a missile launcher with two missile racks of 20 Marauder cluster missiles each. Luckily the Thunderhammer featured missile magazines,filled with 200 more missiles to make up for the small initial payload.

Nearly 10 minutes was required for the reactor to power up from a cold start. On a normal day, dozens of pages of instructions would be followed to bring the beast online. Even before arming the main weapons, fuel lines had to be checked and anti-static reservoirs needed to be discharged. Today though only the necessities were done. Once the red light on the Master Arm switch lit up, it was was combat ready.

The sealed heatsinks it used to contain the scorching heat of all its weapon systems and reactor needed to be released every once in awhile to prevent premature combustion. These large black blocks rose up from the back of the Thunderhammer, arrayed like stegosaur spikes. Steam rose from them as the air drew up the heat that they held.

"All clear" Dizzy called out through the read. Wasp pressed forward on the throttle , easing it to speed. Its slow turn rate meant that nearly half the time it would take to reach the bay door would be taken up by maneuvering.

Ryuki still labored in pain while the others were off on their mission. The cold had wrought permanent damage , his hands and feet felt less responsive and heavy. Still he felt his duties outweighed whatever pain he may have. Sitting up was hard, his back still ached. Breathing was just as hard as his bruised ribs seemed to dig into his lungs with every breath.

Putting on his shoes required dexterity that had not returned to his hands yet. For once he appreciated the near-stupid simplicity of the design of his shoes. Often he found the dumbing down of equipment to be an affront to his intelligence. Now he realized why simplicity was necessary. Thank the Republic Corps of Engineers.

Exhaustion had set in , making his attempts at walking even more difficult. His legs felt heavy and his muscles worn. The lactic acid still chewed through the myofibril ,weakening his already reduced strength. It was no good. Months of therapy would be necessary to repair the damage. He needed a better way to move about.

"Karin, I need one of your spare power-frames" he radioed.

Once she arrived with the equipment the questions began. "Cap, what do you think you're going to do with this? You are aware that you've been relieved of duty right? Get back to bed, rest. We can take care of this", she said.

"No, Im not going to wait for death to snatch me in my sleep" he whispered. She didn't hear him. Her scowl still wracked her face. " Im not going to be idle during all this. Survival is our main objective right now, so we need every available person working on this. Give me the frame and let me do my job" he spoke louder.

"Alright sir. The frame is all yours. Just remember, you need bed rest no matter how much you think you can take. You aren't a robot that we could just replace worn parts. If something goes wrong down here, thats it, sir" she said as she stepped out of the tent.

Here it was, his chance to get back. His body burned, his head ached and his blood ran cold through his veins. Doing nothing had just as much a chance of failure as doing anything. He would not let his team take those chances without him. He pulled his hurting body into the frame. The armor plates clamped down ,encasing him in armor. Frosty steam rose from the frame as the power flowed through.


	16. Chapter 16

He flexed his arms, the metal limbs followed. He turned his head to the right and the monoeye did the same. Holographs floated in front of his eyes with green,yellow and blew text. Blue was for the ammo count for the suit's infantry railgun and the micro missile dispenser. Green for the vital signs and the electrocardiogram. Yellow floating text was for the system status. All clear.

Considering all his vital signs had put a damper on his optimistic outlook at recovery. His pulse was too low , a slow fifty beats per minute. Oxygen levels in his blood was paltry with only ninty-two percent oxygenation. Anemia had set in , making his body hurt for breath.

Put your back into it, he told himself. There was no time to lick wounds, he tried to convince himself. Just under the surface of conscious thought was an idea that had been seeded when he reached the cargo bay. Why no memories? He couldn't understand how there was absolutely no indication in his body or mind where he had been. It seemed only five minutes had passed from the moment he stepped into the dark corridor. His thoughts were jumbled and vague when trying to remember what happened. It was insatiable, his need to find out what happened. No matter how hard he tried ,the hidden memories still remained a phantom pain coursing through his brain.

What was it , what was it throbbing in his brain. Every attempt to find those missing hours return with a blunt pain. His neck creaks and aches as if the thoughts themselves had placed a heavy weight on his shoulders. He could feel his knees buckle but the frame kept him standing. Had it been otherwise, the others would have put him into permanent bedrest. It must be dehydration he thought. That light headed feeling was a sure sign that his body was exhausted. Water was the cure. The robot arm latched onto a sealed bottle of water, cracking the nozzle open with the index and thumb actuators.

Refreshing water, though cold and almost frosty, flowed through him. A reinvigorating wind swept over him. "Ahhhhhh, just what I needed", he said with a satisfied smile on his face. A notion popped into his head. "I dont't need this frame anymore" he thought to himself. A false bravado simmered through his ears. The frame disengaged, its chest splitting and disgorging the still weak passenger. He took the first step and promptly fell on his face.

No one was around to see his foolishness and to keep it that way he scrambled back into the . His head still pounded still, perhaps the dehydration was not the only problem he had. Stress headaches. What a wonderful time to have one of those , he mused. Someone called his name over the radio just as he restarted the control system. "Captain, if you're not up for this you can stay behind. No need to push yourself" the voice on the radio said. "Im fine , I haven't used a frame in a while ,it takes a bit of time to reacquaint myself with it.

Before leaving the tent he made sure that the master-arm was on. The ship was activated by something, it would be likely that it was still in there. Whether the meeting would be in force or in peace, it was still a good idea to go in armed. The suits registered the arming sequence. The railgun hummed with electricity while the missile launcher cycled into a new magazine. "Alright, Im ready" he said then pushed the suit out into the deep freeze.

A veritable murder of mechs stood in a circle. Wreathed in thermal exhaust, they seemed ghostly, as if their presence was merely hallucinatory. "What a joke it would be if this was all in my head" Ryuki thought. A shiver went up his spine. Not a good sign, he thought.

At the center of the circle was Ross, waiting by the FAV. " All aboard" he said. "I'll take the gun" Ryuki replied, taking his place at the turret, helming the machine grenade launcher. "All ,ready up" Ross called out on the radio. Each one of them called in with their state. All green. They rolled out in full force, bristling with enough weapons to take down a small army. The Thunderhammer was prepped with its crane to tear apart the bay doors. It stood up from the thorax of the massive walker like a scorpion's stinger. Not as deadly though.

The armored column rolled on , kicking up ice and water. Towers of steam exhaust turned instantly into crystals , creating a wall of obscuring snow. These machines weren't really built to work in such a deep icy cold. It would only be a matter of time before the hydraulic fluids froze completely or the actuators turning brittle. It had only been three days so far but already the crew were reporting performance issues. Delayed mechanical reaction, difficulty priming rockets and HVAC systems too slow to supply warm air. Everything was falling apart though just slowly enough to elude cursory inspection. Even the best engineers would have been fooled especially in the situation they got themselves into.

It took only ten minutes to reach the bay. The joints that kept it in place had gave way , the doors hanging by thin cables, ready to be ripped apart. The crane's claw snapped onto the lip of the door. The knife-like fingers of the claw sheared through the plasteel as it gripped firmly to the door. The spider-mech then began to walk , pulling the door with it. Metal groaned under the strain, the cables snapping as the became overloaded. "Stay clear! " Ross yelled as he saw the door close to breaking apart.

One last pull and the giant door came down. A shower of ice fell down on them as they trudged towards the opening. Someone chirped on the radio, "Hey, since this thing is blown open, uh, how exactly are we gonna fly this thing out in one piece?". After all this time ,Ryuki realized he had forgotten the reason for all of this, a way out. "We'll figure it out once we're sure we can get this thing off the ground" he said ,though unsure if it was even possible. If the ship was taken by others , wrestling it from them may be a task they may not be able to handle. He caught himself. What is this ? Why am I pessimistic? His neck itched, the hair standing up. He peered into the darkness residing inside the hulking cargo bay. The unknown, it looked back. Its gaze gave him a throbbing headache. It pierced through the armored skin , through the bone of his skull and dug deep inside the folds of his brain. "Sir, your breathing is getting a bit frantic, are you okay?" Ross asked. The suit's vitality sensors were broadcasting , to insure that the captain wouldn't die without notice."Just a headache, I can still do this" Ryuki replied, waving away Ross's concerns and his own.

The first to go in were the Zephyrs. Up they went, climbing onto the deck of the bay. Their heavy feet slammed into the metal floor , ringing out like bells. The Zephyrs proceeded to inspect the bay, looking for any signs of an enemy presence. On the surface of the walls was a thick layer of mildew, untouched for years. The dusty floor seemed undisturbed with no sign that anyone other than themselves had ever been there. Nothing, no signs of any kind of presence. The eerie lack of any human presence lent to a frightening thought, that the ship never had a crew to begin with. A ghost ship, from the future. A novel idea, fit for a book, but horrifying in reality. Either the crew was never aboard, or something happened to them. And whatever happened, they brought along something else.

Ross's buggy was the next that went in It jumped up onto the fallen door and crawled its incline at a slow rate. The Thunderhammer and the Zhuk went last. They all fit comfortably inside the bay. Ryuki was completely sure now that the bay was for mechs. The hanger they had battled in was filled with mechs. It wouldn't surprise Ryuki if the Tradewind was looted and all its cargo was in that infested hanger.

"Alright, lets see if we can close the bay up" Ross yelled through the comm. If they could seal the bay , heating it by expunging the spider-mech heatsinks would be much easier. The exposed girders were perfect for impromptu pulleys . Tossing steel cables over them would give the spider-mechs enough of a moment arm to pull the door back into place.

The Zephyrs swung the tow cables over their heads like lassos. The first shot was Karin's and it failed, instead hitting the roof and slamming back down to the floor. Barry took the next one, swinging the tow cable as fast as possible. Every so often he would release his grip to allow the cable to stretch. The amount of force injected into the cable increased as the length of the free end lengthened. Once it reached nearly thirty meters, Barry snapped his mechs wrist and shot the tow cable over the girder. The clamp smashed through the ceiling, making a hole into the upper deck before it fell back down. Barry gloated over his success. He was an expert, he said, even though he had never done it before. He was just that good.

Karin tried again ,this time angling her shot so that it would pass between the ceiling and girder instead of slamming into the ceiling. With just the right application of the wrist torsion, the tow cable slipped through the gap, landing with only a slight thud. Barry was unimpressed. "You just copied what I did,thats all". Karin smirked , the satisfaction of bringing Barry down from his undeserved pride was more than enough to warm the cockles of her heart.

Claw hooks were affixed to the ends of the tow cables. Another set of cables were attached to the bottom of the door and fixed to the lower joints, to restrict its movement and keep it inline with the frame. "Alright, we're all clear. Ready for you guys" Karin called out through the radio.

The hulking spiders came to life, their legs stretching out to gain footing. One of the two front legs stretched out while the two rear legs pushed forward. The front leg dug into the ground with the other leg now pushing forward along with the rear legs. The door lifted slightly off the ground as the spiders pulled forth.

Groans of metal fatigue whistled out from the door. An inward bend developed at the center, slowly expanding until the door turned concave. The tension on the tow cables began to relax, a sure sign that the hook points were weakening.

Spools began to rotate to increase tension. Sparks flew out from the gearing as the spools attempted to keep the cable from slipping out. The spiders doubled their pace with the Zephyrs pulling and pushing them along. Karin and Barry activated their boosters , letting out a fiery plume that knocked the spiders forward.

Dizzy, in the Thunderhammer, spun the crane around. The arm sprung forward hard enough to nearly rip it off its foundation. "Hit it!" Wasp yelled. Dizzy depressed the launch button on the crane control. The end manipulator exploded out its socket, propelled by a series of rockets towards the far wall. A long thick cable streamed across the bay along with it. It burst through the wall with explosive force. Claws expanded into the opening and clamped down tight. A cable return spool spun up while the arm itself pulled in a tug of war between it and the heavy door.

Rivets exploded out of their holes, Fluid lubricant spilled out of the arm like blood while the arm plating split and bolts sheared off. One last pull before the arm ripped apart. The spider mech lept forward on its hind legs. The bay door smashed into the frame. The Zhuk made the final pull , wedging the bay door into the frame, sealing the cargo hold in the process.


	17. Chapter 17

"Alright we wont be opening that up again any time soon. So get comfortable" Ryuki coughed out. "Lets open up those heatsinks so we dont freeze to death" he yelled. Large plates on the backs of the Zhuk and Thunderhammer retracted to reveal the black body radiators stored inside their steel thorax's. Slow they rose up , these thin rows of plates much like the scaly spikes on the back of a Stegosaurus. Steam floated out , these wisps entwining with the exposed metal beams and the mildewed walls.

They sealed the hatches and gangways with cannisters of insta-insul , spraying the rapidly foaming compound into any nook and cranny they could find. Still they felt the heat escaping and began to pile up empty wooden crates and furniture into a giant bonfire. Though they meant well, the lack of working ventilation would have killed them in their sleep. It only took a few minutes after the fire was set that someone realized the implication.

"Uh, we need to put this fire out. Theres no HVAC in here, we'll suffocate" Karin called out from the pit of her Zephyr. They stood there dazed as if a horrific revelation was made. Well, to them it was horrific. A glowing, warm fire had to die so that they could live. Ryuki walked up to the fire and sprayed the blaze down with an extinguisher. "Party's over, get some rest" he coughed.

Beige tents were tossed up in a circle around a hot heatsink. The Thunderhammer had provided one of its four to warm the crew as they slept. While the rest of the team slept two to a tent, Ryuki took to one by himself. His mind was in a tizzy ,still contemplating everything thats happened. He was afraid, this moment of solitude could unlock unwanted emotions. His time spent had been in tension or in leadership but never enough time to think for just a moment. Everything had been reactionary ,instinctual, until this point. Sitting alone, in a dark tent, knowing something was out there did not do any favors for the captain's bruised psyche.

So now, with no intrusions,invasions or insubordination, he had the choice. Stay awake and allow his mind to completely comprehend this series of events that had become his waking life, or to sleep and allow the thoughts and emotions to dig indelible scars into his brain. He stayed awake, fully aware of the misfortunes he was attracting. He unrestrained himself , lied down and waited.

Hours passed as he laid there. His eyes turned red from agitation, his mouth dry from being exposed to the cold for so long. Waiting for something to happen, anything. He closed his eyes, not to sleep ,but to see what his mind could be showing him.

At first it was darkness. Then movement, something was moving in the shadows. No, it was the darkness itself, flexing and waving, like a satin sheet. Plop, something dropped into it, splashing the darkness around it, sending ripples across the fabric. Another drop but the splash did not recede. At the pinpoint where the ripples emanated , a pillar began to form , reaching up into the sky until the fabric tore to pieces. This scrap of ebony cloth fell back down to the ground. It squirmed, though it seemed as if the wind was kicking it up. It danced atop the dark plane until it stopped midway through a jump.

The ghostly apparition, turned to face him, its face was scarred and pockmarked and its eyes jet black. It molted, the fabric disintegrating but revealing underneath some kind of humanoid shaped amorphous goo. Slick oil dripped from its long thin limbs, congealing on the ground like blood. The goop began to disappear around its face, revealing pink and white sinew. Veins coursed underneath pumping vigorously. Its skull was marked with spiky extrusions. The crown was oblong, like some kind of ram. Its mouth, its mouth was the worst. All teeth. Sharp shark teeth, reciprocating rows of flesh rending destruction. Rows and rows of them. Its mouth expanded , its jaw dislocating. There, in its mouth, a barbed tongue, shaped much like a mace or morningstar. Yellow viscous liquid lapped up with every chomp of the mouth, splashing out ,spittle that seemed to burn . Acid spit, barbed tongue, chainsaw teeth. But still , its form was vague, still a shadow nestled in darkness. The mouth snapped shut violently. Crunch crunch crunch, it was chewing something. Bone, fragments of bone slopped out of its mouth. Bits of flesh sliped between the bloody teeth. Then its eyes looked towards him. An unidentifiable light shined on its eyes , reflecting back a dead gaze.

Sloppy foot steps echoed back to him, the creature moving in closer. To inspect him? Eat him? He still didn't know what it was chewing. There was no need to find out. Fear gripped him as the teeth came into clearer view, now drenched in blood and covered in torn flesh. Its pace quickened but Ryuki was unable to move. His body was frozen, his limbs no longer reacting to his commands. He turned his head, there was nothing , no where to hide even if he could.

The creature was meters away, its flesh turning black like charred coal, its breath hot and filled with the stink of rotting meat. Its tongue was dangling and its lips quivering in anticipation of its next meal.

It stood over him, nearl ten meters tall. Its acid spit dripped, burning him and sending shocks of intense pain as his skin burned off. It burned right to the bone, exposing the red marrow. Its mouth opened wide , the teeth reverberating like vibro-blades. Its mouth snapped shut around him.

He woke up from his dream. There was nothing in it, no consolation, no reprieve. The fear had taken hold of his unconscious mind. He could feel it when each decision came delayed when it should have been instant. Hesitation , just a few seconds but enough to render his orders invalid. A primal fear arose from the disturbing dream. That his own mind was working against him, his decisions not for the benefit of his team but for some traitorous goal.

He smacked his hand into his cheek, smashed his fist into his skull. There was no way to dig these thoughts out, they were trapped within the fatty cells of his brain, they had become him. What was there to do when he his own decisions could play against him? He was afraid to say something. They would dismiss him and everything he's ever done. No longer would he be there captain, just some useless passenger on this ride to Helheim.

"I cant do this, I cant" he whispered. He oscillated between telling them and not. "Not ,this is it, I can't jeopardize them for some stupid pride". It was definitive. The right choice. All his time as a leader, he knew one day he would have to remove himself from command. He needed to do this, to protect everyone from his wayward mind.

He stepped out of his tent, to find himself in an empty hanger. No tents in sight, and all but one of the mechs gone. This wasn't right at all, this could not have happened while he was still awake. There had to have been something else. A hallucination maybe. Maybe thats it, maybe he was still asleep. All he needed to do was to wake up somehow.

The pit was as real as any he had ever been in. Quite the convincing hallucination. The hatch closed down , the systems all starting up one by one. The automatic prep took over until it reached the arming stage. All of the weapons were armed. If this was a dream it wouldnt matter how much ammunition he used up, it was all fake anyway. Maybe, he thought.

The freight elevator access was shut. Manipulator hands fitted between the doors and pulled on them until they bent outwards enough to make room for his mech to pass through. The elevator shaft was long , seemingly going on for kilometers thanks to the lack of light. Even night vision was unable to show the true extent of it. A cable hanged loose , perhaps the elevator cable. A tug on it showed that it was firmly attached.

The rocket claw was a bit underused. It needed a few flexes to get the rust to wear off. Ryuki aimed it as high as he thought he could reach. Two panels opened up revealing a set of solid fuel rockets. Ignition was a violent event with streams of white exhaust filling the shaft as bright yellow plumes of flame raced upwards.

The claw grabbed onto a ledge about fifty meters up. He reeled the cable back , pulling himself up. The climb was slow and he had no idea where to go. He searched for some kind of sign, perhaps a floor with communication equipment or someway to call for help.

Up again he went, the next floor just more storage. What to expect from a trade ship? It seemed he had travelled several hundred meters up till he found an open door. His mech went through it, a beacon of light floated some distance away.

He approached the light and tried to grasp it to no avail. The light was completely holographic or imaginary, it could have been either really. He couldn't tell the difference anyway. His head started throbbing again, the light growing brighter and brighter till it felt his eyes were burning away.

The pain woke him up from his deep slumber. His head pounded, the vestiges of exhaustion still haunting him. A vague recollection was all that remained of his night , barely enough to reconstruct any useful information. A sharp pain crossed his shin causing him to yelp as the shock passed over him,

A sweet smell wafted into his tent. The smell of baked batter and honey. Pancakes. For once, he felt relieved, the familiar taste of banana pancakes reawakening his memories of home. "Excellent, the best ones I have ever had", he said with a wide smile. "Oh thats a surprise, I just warmed the can up and tossed it onto plates. You must be really hungry ,Cap", Reaper replied. "If you want, I can cook up a batch of butter-pecan pancakes from my personal stash. I hate to see terrible food get eaten with a gusty like you sir, seriously you deserve better" he replied. Not quite humble. But it was true. A chief on his off time, Reaper was one of the best at what he did. A combat soldier who can whip up a hearty meal, something many captains could only dream of. R rations were no match, even with their lard-dough bread.

"No no, hold onto your food when we really need it, like when we have a victory party while we're piloting this hulking ship off this icicle" he said with a laugh. Reaper laughed too, insincerely at first , but the moment caught him. The forced smile turned into a wide grin,as he joined with everyone else.

"Hah, man that might not be fun, but what the hell right? We ain't living forever bro!" Barry roared. They ate their breakfast , grabbing more canned pancakes , still hungry and still laughing. The cold, the fear and the threat of failure had left, temporarily. Once again the felt surety in their endeavor, and even in the face of terror, they felt the courage to continue forth well up. A simple meal and a content captain was all it took for them to muster courage.

The end of breakfast didn't temper their courage. In fact, with the day ahead of them, they felt even more ready to escape. Whether on this ship or swimming across space itself, Ryuki and his team felt more than ready to win this fight.


	18. Chapter 18

"So Cap, what was all that screaming about? Sounded like old-fashioned fisticuffs going on in your tent" Reaper asked. Joeseph "Reaper" Readings was not a particularly astute man. His question only brought wincing embarrassment to the party surrounding him. Dizzy tried to shush him, placing her index finger across her lips, but Reaper was too dense to realize. In his mind, everyone seemed even more interested in the captain's night exploits. Perhaps they had the same perverse thoughts as he, as he thought the captain was in a furious masturbation session. Something he wished he could do in privacy.

"So, you been waxing the pole hard huh? I can see it in your face" Reaper spoke nonchalantly. Dizzy slapped down Reaper's head, leaving a nice sized welt where her heavy glove landed. He howled in pain as his bald head shined red with Dizzy's hand print.

Ryuki intervened before Reapers face was turned into a large red dot. "Eh, you know what, I wish. I had a dream , I dont know what it was but it was vivid. I was in an elevator shaft, found it at the far end of this bay,jumping up with my mech till I reached an open door. I went through it and at the end something was shining so bright. I dont know , a premonition maybe?".

"Well, if it was true, then there should be some kind of access hatch in this bay " Ross spoke as he inhaled the scent of freshly brewed french vanilla coffee. "Maybe its a service elevator, that should be big enough to carry our mechs, though not the spiders", he continued.

"Sure, lets do that. Is anyone doing repairs or maintenance?" Ryuki asked. "Nope, Ive got absolutely nothing to do, Sir" Karin replied. "Good, lets meet up in twenty minutes, enough time to get morning business doen , aye?" Ryuki replied.

Breakfast ended and each went their own way. Twenty minutes until the first expedition deeper into the space hulk. What was waiting for them on the inside? They had only pierced the skin of the beast, made their home into the subcutaneous layer. What to talk on such a mission? They all figured at least one weapon needed to come along. The FRX-17 portable flamethrower had a range of 20 meters and a cone of fire of 15 degrees. A large blue flame sat at the nose, waiting for something to ignite. Ten litre gas cannisters screwed into the gun into an underside flip-out armored receiver. The Dragon, it was called, a fire breathing monster sure to bring ruin to anything in the path of its breath.

The mechs were beat up, dents and worn paint pockmarking the machines. Bits and pieces of armor scraped off, others completely covered in freezing ice. Blast marks from their fight in the hangar scarred the armor plating. Possibly the worst damage was the infiltration of water into the motorized joints. The heat given off by the high energy current coarsing through the mech were enough to evaporate any water that seeped in. But if left offline, the heat would dissipated and the water would be given a chance to freeze solid. The joints would break apart , the motors would succumb to the icy knives. Maybe a flamethrower could keep the ice from forming.

On the cargo sleds that the spiders pulled were crates and containers filled with weapons and ammunition. Rocket pods, folding flak cannons, field artillery , all that they could salvage from the empty HQ. Even macro-scale flamthrowers fueled by barrels of gellied petroluem were loaded up. Now all these weapons were welded, strapped or otherwise affixed to the mech bodies. These machines , once sleek and agile had been turned into a pile of rockets,shells and gun barrels. Movement was highly restricted by the protruding weaponry,turning the Zephyrs into walking turrets.

The pilot deck wasn't left alone either. Inside were stacks of rations, boxes of ammunition and cannisters of fire extinguishers. There was little room left, not enough to let someone drop into the passenger seat. Even if it was possible, the seat was full with rifles and grenades.

The tight quarters of the pilot deck constrained armor choices. Ryuki wanted to wear his combat suit, with motorized joints and built in armaments. His only choice then was the EVA suit, a thin outfit that felt just a bit too tight. The fabric was specially designed to retain heat and to deflect cosmic radiation. It would only provide a few minutes of protection should the reactor meltdown, though.

Only three of the suits would be sent out for the expedition, the other two remaining with the spider mechs . Ryuki, Ross and Karin opted to go,carrying with them a long thick cable to provide uninterrupted power and communications should they need it.

The rusted and worn hulks began to move out into the dark side of the bay. Lack of light rendered the night vision goggles useless, as they needed at least a bit of light to augment vision. Thus, they switched on the headlights and lamps , shining hundreds of thousands of lumens into the dark corners. A sigh of relief, no sight of unfriendly aliens.

They began to tap the walls for hollow spaces behind them but the familiar thunk of steel on steel was the only thing they found. They paced up and down the dark edges , looking for any sign of a elevator door. Empty crates fell in their path, rusted gurneys and cranes sat silent in their wake.

Ross had trouble seeing where he was going. Periodically, the camera's on his mech would fog up , and only time away from the search would remove it. It seemed to happen on a regular schedule though. Odd, Ross thought. There wasn't a leak in his suit, none of the pressure sensors in the reactor coolant system were reading a hunch, he decided to pace the walls.

When his cameras fogged up again, he marked his map. He paced to the right from the spot, to let his cameras defog, for a few minutes. He came back , going past it in the opposite direction he first encountered the fog. Again, his cameras fogged. There was a source of warm air behind the wall facing him, no doubt the elevator shaft that the captain spoke about.

"Sir, I think I found it" Ryuki's radio clattered. At Ross's position, he found the lieutenant standing outside his mech, holding a fire extinguisher in his hands. Once Ryuki arrived, Ross blasted the wall with it. The thick white exhaust splashed onto the wall then drifted down the the floor. Spurts of the white fog burst through the panels , making out a large double door. "Thats it, thats it" Ryuki said as he stood atop his own mech, the heat swirling around him as it escaped from the open pilot deck.

"Alright, so we have to pry it open. How do we do that?" Ross yelled out. " We need something strong but flat, a lever" Ryuki said. In the middle of an abandoned cargo hold, surrounded by refuse, there had to be something useful. "Lets start disassembling some girders and walls" after a few moments of quiet contemplation.

The cutting torches were different from the welders. The flame was longer ,brighter ,hotter. They were called plasma lances. Superheated fluid, composed of ions from sacrificial matter, swirling like a storm's eye inside the electromagnetic containment where they are born.

Beams of plasma pierced through loose steel , burning through red holes , leaving rapidly cooling scars. The long plates were cut up into thin levers. Their ends were burnished and ground to points, perfect for fitting between the thin panel lines of the walls. The plasma torches burned bright , painting the walls cobalt blue as they sliced through metal.

The mechs gripped the levers and thrusted them into the walls marked off by tape. The sharp ends pierced through. A strong push was enough to force the lever deeper, establishing a strong foothold. The mechs pulled and pulled on the levers causing the the doors to bend. The bolts that held them in place popped out of their sockets, the sliding joint splintered to pieces and the doors whined as they were torn from their moorings. They bounced onto the floor, rattling the entire bay, maybe the entire ship.

Past the doors was an impenetrable darkness. Flashing lights into the shaft only revealed the other side of the shaft, a motley assembly of severed cables ,rotten steel and paper refuse. Pointing upwards only revealed the next two landings above them. None of the doors were open which meant the levers would have to be used again.

The rocket claws were aimed up , hopefully at the fifth floor. The captain's dream pointed to the top floor where the light resided. It was there that he thought they would find escape, or at the very least answers before their impending doom.

Karin fired her claw to where she thought was the top floor. The rocket motors burst into action, launching the claw up at a blazing speed. The claws extended, read the grab whatever came its way. It smashed into the wall , unleashing a crashing rattle. Bits of the floor came crashing down but the claw remained firm. Karin pulled back on the winch, pulling herself up .

As the mech rose up, its lamps turned on, in search for something interesting.

She only reached the fourth floor but found the doors loose. She punched through the door, knocking it off its frame to reveal a still lit floor. "Cap, power's still up on this floor" she radioed down. Pack up and head up there? At least scout it out, he thought. Was this what he saw, he thought. What else could it be? Light is the opposite of darkness, right. Nothing is hidden in the light, its all there to see. Nothing hiding, waiting in the darkened corners. It was good, he knew it. It had to be.

All the mechs were to be mobilized. For pacification if the need arises. The door into the powered floor was only wide enough for one mech at a time. A preliminary investigation showed that the floor was large enough to take the entire platoon. Odd though, that while the floor is powered, the elevator wasn't. Why would only that floor be on? At least to his knowledge, nothing else was powered.

Up they went, one by one. There were five of them, leaving two behind. Wasp and Dizzy stayed behind, each one piloting a spider and ready with emergency medical equipment. Dizzy kept an eye on the communication and power cables.

Once they had all reached the floor, they split into two groups, each assigned to one side of the floor. Ryuki and Ross took what they assumed was the east side, while Karin, Reaper and Barry took the west side. They split off, leaving the cable behind with a short range transceiver to allow them to have uninterrupted comms.

The rooms were large and white, with tables arranged in rows, each table nearly ten meters long. These steel tables were topped with white ceramic slabs , with troughs on the sides. Ryuki zoomed into the trough and spotted dark stains leading to the drain. It seemed each table had a separate drain. Perhaps it was a kitchen, there were ovens after all.

The white walls were much less immaculate than on cursory investigation. Water stains, from decades of dripping water. Blotches of mold growing from the cracks, darkening the walls. Under the forests of mold, the bare steel walls showed, rusted and eaten away by frozen water.

No, the water isn't frozen. Its wet ,dripping like sweat. The room had been used recently.


	19. Chapter 19

"What is going on here? Seems a bit lived in huh? " Barry exclaimed. The low dim lights weren't bright enough to make out any details of the rooms but the fact they were on meant that something was providing power. Along the floors were subtle prints on the floor. The minerals in the melting ice had coagulated around the outline of strange feet , leaving light orange stains on the floor.

The water that pooled on those prints were lukewarm, whereas the water dripping from the walls were at a mild room temperature. It wasn't too long ago that something had walked these halls. "Alright, regroup and follow those tracks", Ryuki ordered.

The prints merged with a larger group of doors in an anteroom that connected hallways to other sections of the floor. The entire team travelled towards an enormous sliding double door which seemed locked on cursory investigations.

Ramming the door with a solid armored fist wasn't enough to open it. It was sealed against mechanized interlopers. But there were always other ways to break a door down. One was to break the security.

There, on the wall behind them was a control panel. Like everything else, it had been active, quite recently in fact from the signs of moisture on the keypad. The pad was too small for a manipulator to use.

"Alright Karin, its your ball" Ryuki radioed. Karin "Kestrel" Matsui , the engineer, the computer specialist and whatever else the team needed. Her skills changed with the nature of the work. While the work was maddening for someone who had to learn each new task on her own, she relished the thought that she gained many skills in the course of struggling with frustrating tasks. Hacking a door panel , though, was much easier. Scouring the net for hack-tools was a breeze and loading them into her persocom made it into a do-all omnitool.

The torso hatch slid open and a rope ladder dropped out. Karin climbed down , her face obscured by the gold film of her helmets' visor. She moved with a slow ,deliberate pace towards the panel. Looking both ways , even, in case of errant mechs. She examined the panel, ports and displays for anything that looked like an entry into the soft-works.

There it was, a standard port. The future wasn't that different, was it, she wondered. She pulled out the retractable cable on her arm mounted persocom and plugged in. The panel lit up, the backlight on the buttons shining bright as if new. Now they waited as the hack-tools cycled through millions of exploits and tactics to overcome security measures.

"If this is one of ours, then it should be easy to hack. No one ever takes the time to pay for proper protection" Karin spoke into her radio. Text began to flash on the display, a mixture of red and greens as the hack-tools probed for security faults. Overcoming the failure-gate allowed the bits of software to have unlimited read-write access , checking and overwriting security measures one by one until finally the panel had become a blank slate upon which Karin could hijack the doors on the entire floor.

The red light next to the door flashed into a solid green. The sound of mag-locks disengaging rang through the hallway. Karin scrambled back into her suit before they breached the room. A slight nudge pushed the double doors open. With there mechs crouched, they moved through one by one.

The room was humid. Immediately after entering their vision skewed from the moisture enveloping their optics. Heating elements burned off the collecting vapor to reveal the large bay to be covered in strange fleshy growths. They dangled from the ceiling and stretched across the walls, pulsating discordantly.

"Well, I am not really surprised" Barry spoke. The spongy floor yielded to the weight of their mechs, letting loose sickening sounds as they walked over. Only a few light fixtures worked which left the bay dim and let darkness cover much of it. They moved in, spread out in a tactical formation, to confront the horrors that may wait in the shadows.

Further into the bay , the light disappeared completely with only their flood lamps to illuminate the surrounding area. They moved methodically, checking every blind spot and dark corner , hoping that nothing would attack. Each turn was an anxiety inducing chance, a probability of indescribable horror waiting for them. Nothing jumped out at them, yet the overbearing sense of dread still followed them. It seemed their shoulders were loaded with an inescapable burden of knowing that something was hunting them but lacking the knowledge to fight back against it.

Passing more wall polyps and fleshy floor , still going deeper into a foul jungle of waiting predators, they saw a weak orange glow cast onto the walls, seeping out from the periphery of their vision. "Move in" Ryuki whispered, unnecessary though it was since they had already began their maneuver before he could say a word.

Barry surveyed the roof for any wall-crawlers while Ross and Karin guarded the back of the formation. Ryuki and Reaper forged on ahead, turning into a blind corner. They froze in place when they saw it. It was like one of the polyps yet tremendously larger,dwarfing their mechs and reaching all the way up to the high ceiling of the cargo bay. It glowed orange and pulsated like a beating heart. Viscous fluid travelled through transparent appendages that had bored through the walls and floor. It was planted down with wispy hairs under its mushroom-like cap, each strand moving on its own accord like tentacles.

They approached it slowly, their flamethrowers raised and whatever other guns they had ready to fire. Rockets primed, rifles and cannons loaded , anti-infantry plates ready to burst forth with shrapnel. The giant pod puffed up and released a cloud from its cap.

A screeching sound pierced through their armored hulls. The tendrils behind the pod parted to reveal a hole and out poured powered-suits, hideously transformed into plague carriers , fleet footed and prone to explode. The hopped towards them, bursting when near. The bodies spread their entrails over the mechs before the flame throwers could burn them.

The fire cleansed the area of the fleshy polyp. The blaze ate through the suits and melted the polyp into a puddle. But more of the corrupted suits swarmed in, scurrying along on all four limbs like spiders. The flamethrowers couldn't keep up against the dozens of fast moving creatures. A pair of creatures latched onto Ryuki's mech, forcing him to aim his flamethrower into his torso. The fire spread over him as the flamethrower doused him in burning accelerant and napalm. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the suits explode into flames to reveal a human body, warped and distorted by some kind of parasitic growth. Its skin peeled away like burning paper before burning up into a charred husk.

They found the missing scientists and what seemed to be the rest of the base staff. Whatever planted the wall-crawling sinewy vines , whatever hijacked those dormant mechs from before, they had to be behind this. Their faces seemed burned into his dark silhouettes contorted as if to scream but all that remained were empty husks commandeered by horrific parasites. So many questions were suppressed by the will to survive. Were they still alive? In pain? It didn't matter, the team was concentrated on surviving.

Karin grabbed hold of one scurrying across her visor and tossed it at the wall. The body flopped to the ground, bleeding a strange red-brown ichor. The body disintegrated upon the flames , leaving only ash and an outline of where it once hung from the wall.

They switched off who would reload, one by one consecutively changing the fuel cannisters, yelling out to each other when they began the process. The vile creatures slowly let up in the face of the blazing whirlwind. They pulled back in retreat, a strange display of intellect for such relentless creatures.

All around them were scorch marks and burning corpses. What remained of the polyp lay in a pool of green and brown liquid, its arms standing like burnt statues. Liquid metal ran down the walls to repair the damage but the nozzles had jammed causing blobs of the plasteel to collect like tarballs.

The team slowly pushed forward towards the gaping hole in the wall dripping with the silvery grey metal liquid. A plate slid off the wall and smashed into the ground ,ringing out like a gong. The ground rumbled on its impact.

"Push forward", Ryuki said in monotone. They approached the threshold , stopping for a moment as if to consider the levity of the situation. Before they could take the first step, the floor rumbled. It seemed to emanate from quite a distance away , yet that did not relieve them of the sense of foreboding.

"It could be from an upper floor. This level doesn't seem to have much else in it other than some science labs and cargo bays" Ross called in. There were too many secrets on this ship, what seemed to be a dead end could very well be the entrance to something indescribable. Another rumble vibrated through the floor and up into their pilot-decks.

"Lets keep going" Ryuki responded. His mech was the first to cross through. On the other side was an alien world teeming with ethereal lights and odd forests of fleshy vines. This side of the ship was thoroughly invaded, not a single defining characteristic of the ship was left untouched. So complete was the conversion that their deck maps that they had downloaded from the terminal Karin hacked had become close to useless. Walls had been torn open to form new hallways while bays that were expansive were too thick with vines to traverse into.

Still the rumbling persisted through all this. The green vegetation and the rumbling combined to create a gripping foreignness of the ship. Its seeming time travel, the infestation and the burning corpses all would lead one to think that they weren't even on the planet they started on.

Ahead of them they found some of the creatures that retreated but died on their escape route. Most were burned out of their suits and the parasites fried to a crisp. "Hey , take a closer look at that" Ross radioed. Ryuki zoomed in on the location Barry pointed to. There, crumpled on the floor, was a body. Most of the suit still remained. On it, the Steelhelm insignia was prominent with its blue and yellow hues , the viking helmet of the coat of arms standing out against the charred clothing.

The crew of the base. They had come here. The ships that left, possibly filled with more of these corrupted soldiers. The researchers had to be here too. It was too much for Barry. His mech doubled back to the freight elevator. "I can't , I just can't, this isn't right , none of this is right" he whispered through the radio. Reaper acted the same way when his mind cracked upon discovering the ice animals. Reaper ,though, reacted differently this time. He stood there, motionless. As if every control and motorized joint had locked up. What sounded like radio static was the low,quiet breathing of Reaper. The shock of seeing fellow soldiers warped into unrecognizable heaps had spread through his mind, knocking out his sense of place and time. His mind dived deep into a dark pit , wading in violent imagery yet unable to leave. For the time being, he suffered alone as The others chased after Barry.

As Barry bull-rushed through the wide hallway , a crash could be heard from the elevator shaft. He slowed his pace to a walk , his flamethrower ready in the mechs manipulator hand. While his finger was anxiously hovering the trigger, he was fortunate that the weapon required the double-trigger to be pulled completely to fire. A flinch of his finger wouldn't cost someone's life, unless he did it on purpose.

His light shined through the darkness. He looked up. Nothing aside from a pale yellow warning light. He looked down. The comm cable had snapped. And worse, a mass of mottled green flesh had jammed into it, partially blocking the shaft. He stepped back and dismounted from the mech.


	20. Chapter 20

Ryuki rushed to retrieve Barry while Ross and Karin continued to try to bring Reaper back from his delirium. He found Barry standing at the foot of the elevator, motionless and weeping silently. "No way out , no way out" he kept repeating. He was so close to the edge, slowly approaching the threshold. Ryuki leaped out from his mech and landed into a running start. He reached him just as he was about to put his foot out into the chasm. Ryuki reached out and grabbed Barry's arm , pulling him as hard as possible and slamming him onto the ground.

"Barry, snap out of it! This isn't the time to freak out! You've got people counting on you, peoples lives on your hands! I swear if you do something stupid I will send you to court martial, you understand that!?" Ryuki roared without stop. His voice echoed through the elevator shaft and back into the long hallway behind him.

The pupils in Barry's eyes had grown wide in the dim light. He looked pale and drops of sweat rolled down his forehead. His mouth opened as if to speak but only let out a harsh cough. He sat himself off, tossed his head from side to side to shake himself of the disturbing visions as reality seemed to be an illusion to him. "I uh , I dont know what happened. I just snapped. But uh, the way back down is gone. The comm cable is down. We're blind up here . What do we do now" he asked softly.

"We do things on the fly, thats what we do. Get up into your mech, we're going to tear this place apart" Ryuki spoke firmly. His resolve had been shaken, to see another of his squad mates fall to the call of despair. It definitely called to him. The easy decision, to just give up, always seemed to be a quicker resolution. Lay down, get down with it. No more fighting, no more fear, no more pain and suffering. No more frustration.

Too easy , he thought. Life isn't worth living if everything came easy. No, he wouldn't stop till his entire team was on a ship off this ice ball. Even if he has to drag them out of this icy pit. "Form up on me, Lt. Olafson" Ryuki radioed to Barry. The order was a clarion call to Barry, to pick himself up from desperation. "Roger, forming up on you".

They raced back to see Karin smacking down on Reapers suit, slapping it around like a slapstick comedy routine. "Hey, idiot , if you keep this up we'll just leave you behind" she berated him. "Reaper, fall into formation" Ryuki radioed. No response. "That is an order, sergeant", he said. The suit moved slightly , the head craning towards him. "If you don't comply I will be forced to put you in confinement for insubordination", he said once more.

He wondered, could he really do that? There were so few of them, there couldn't be a good reason for that. "Sir, all my years I always wondered what they would look like. Would they be green skinned babes? Or three headed, five legged plant monsters? I never wondered if they would do this though. Those things attached to the crew. It was like they replaced parts of their bodies. It had to be painful. But the one thing that I keep wondering, were they aware of it? Did they know what was happening? Captain, I want you to turn me to ash if one of those things attaches to me. I don't want to find out what its like on the other side" Reaper finally spoke.

Quite the request ,Ryuki thought. But it stayed in his mind. Would that be running away? He promised himself to bring everyone back but what if it wasn't possible? Was that a failure of leadership? Uncertainty once again crept back into his mind. He was so sure only moments before that he would do whatever was necessary to evacuate the planet. Maybe, maybe it would be alright , a merciful death to avoid a horrific future.

"Sir, we can get into the rest of the deck now, there might be another elevator elsewhere", Ross said. "Alright , column formation, Ross takes point" Ryuki called out. They rolled through the maw into a stark steel hallway. They passed junctions that led into passages too small for their mechs to fit into, forcing them to stay on the single path they found themselves traversing.

A light ahead turned out to be the ceiling lights of a large cafeteria with a false skyline replaying on the ceiling. "Dismount here, unpack a few rations while we have some tables to eat on. You've got fifteen minutes then we mount up again" Ryuki said while climbing out of his mech.

They sat quietly, quickly eating their rations and always looking behind their backs. The food was tasteless as far as they cared, their minds were focused on their surroundings. Waiting for one of those parasites to pop up took every bit of their awareness. Tiny things they kept their eyes on, swaying shadows or motion subtle enough to escape cursory glances, they were keen on looking for such subtle changes in the environment. The walls shuttered by some kind of distance explosion. The ground heaved ever so slightly and gravity itself seemed to be slipping directions. It could be the ice melting around the ship, causing it to sink further down. Perhaps it was those strange ice manatees. They seemed agitated , maybe they're trying to remove the source of their problems. Ryuki wondered why he was ascribing to them some kind of maliciousness. The world had turned him into an absolute cynic, even

Time passed quickly but the unease lingered. Even back inside the armored carapace of their machines, uncertainty continued to haunt their thoughts. The start up process was tense, rearming weapons took a bit of time, time in which they were completely vulnerable. They watched the displays slowly ramp up, flickering into view and floating in front of them. The complex start up process was streamlined for these machines but not enough to make the intervening waiting any more bearable.

"Alpha 1 ready" Ryuki said over the radio They counted up , like a timer , till all were ready. " Column formation" Ryuki called out. A sudden crash jolted them up, reflected by the armor as controlled through their neuromagnetic uplinks. An aftershock reverberated through the ground, forceful enough to move the tables and chairs.

They thought it was an oncoming attack but for the longest time nothing happened. They waited at the ready , their brains hyperactive in their attempts to predict the enemy attack. Nothing at all but the echo of whining metal. Ryuki then realized what was about to happen. He roared through the radio "Brace for impact!" as he pushed his mech up against the wall. Just as his team moved into position ,the ceiling began to break apart and drop down.

Huge panels came sliding off the ceiling, their shattered pieces turning into dangerously sharp shards that would have sliced up anyone not in armor. Gravity shifted from under their feet. No longer was it pulling down but pulling on their backs . The ship was tilting.

The cafeteria caved in around them as the ship tilted to its side, creating a large hole in the roofing , revealing various air ducts and pipes. Amidst the crashing of metal was a muffled gnawing and scratching. Only Ross and Karin could hear it , their ears still functional unlike Ryuki's, which after years of explosions and gun fire had become a constant source of ever-present ringing.

"Something's digging through the walls, Cap" Ross radioed in. Karin began scanning down the exposed ceiling for signs of life. Blips showed up on her map. They were small it seemed, similar in size to a human. A warning rang out through her cabin and a new image appeared in front of her. The magnetometric sensors were picking up huge objects moving towards them.

"Mechs! Same as those damn corrupted bots we saw before" Karin yelled. The flame throwers would be useless in this fight. They tossed their flame units to the ground and pulled flak guns and auto-rifles from their chest and back racks. The ship stopped its tilt enough to allow the corrupted warmachines to finally break through.

Ryuki fired off his flak gun. The shell exploded into shrapnel, shedding any light armored parts. The flak sheared through the head of one of the machines , another losing its left hand and right arm. They guns they carried exploded as the shrapnel caused the ammunition to cook off.

Barry fired off rockets from his shoulder pod into the opening above them. The rockets exploded into a shower of shape charged daggers , cutting through several mechs. Their parts fell through while more poured into the room. The precarious tilt had made movement difficult which forced Ryuki's team on their backs, firing off in the hopes of killing off the entire attacking force.

Still they poured in. Then the first return shots rained down on them. Auto-cannons fired in brief staccato bursts, racking their armor though none were critical shots. They needed to move to cover somehow while still maintaining their precarious footing.

"Fire off your hooks on the opposite wall" Ryuki yelled. In unison they raised the left claw-arms and fired off the rocket propelled hooks. The claws broke through the opposite walls, grabbing onto steel girders that supported the walls. The motorized reels screeched into action, pulling them along the floor-turned-wall to the other side.

Karin used this chance to fire off a set of air-burst missiles from a flip-up missile launcher. The missiles flew in arched curves with blazing blue flames up into the ceiling. When they exploded ,they spread a thick cloud of explosive gas into the followed by a compression wave that ignited the fuel into a powerful explosion.

The organic parts on the enemy mechs burst into flames. The heat melted through the steel girders, causing an avalanche of detritus to fall . A combined heap of burnt out wrecks and melted steel panels and beams crashed through the floor, forming a sort of bridge up to the floor above them.

"Rush it!" Ryuki yelled. Their only chance was to get topside. They aimed up into the next floor and fired their hooks in succession. The clasped claws burst through the next floor's ceiling and clamped down on the support beams. This time they used their rocket boosters to propel themselves along with the hook winch ,bursting through the ground wreathed in flames as the smashed back down onto the next floor.

From there they formed a circle of fire and blasted away with cannon and rocket fire. The rockets splintered into steel daggers , piercing through the flesh and pustules that covered the corrupted mechs. Their cannons tore through the reinforced ablative plates that made up the facades of the invaders , melting away the armor and exploding dead center inside their torsos.

Though their weapons were effective ,they could only fighter for as long as they had ammunition. Slowly they realized that each shell, each rocket and grenade were needed to fire true. No longer could they strafe their fire. Even with the advanced targeting computers and aim-assistance , it was chance that directed the ultimate destiny of each round they fired.

"Burst fire if you have to but don't waste your ammo" Ryuki yelled through the radio. Slowly they forced their way through. Their grappling claws now became weapons. They crushed the servo-joints to prevent the enemy mechs from lifting their weapons. But still they fired , their shots smashing through Ryuki's arms, heavily damaging the motors. His arms were now locked , preventing him from pivoting his weapon. It was only a hindrance to him though as he adapted to the new battlefield. He used the torso to rotate around like a tank turret while firing off rounds from his slightly lifted forearm. He was lucky then, each shot blew out the upper torsos and heads of the swarming machines.


	21. Chapter 21

Karin fired off her claw , a telescopic punch she would call it later. The bladed fingers snapped open and grabbed hold on the head of a corrupted Rapier strike suit. She watched the lenses shatter and a shower of sparks burst forth, setting the biomechanical mass that consumed the robots body on fire. With the other hand she fired off a burst from her arm mounted grenade gun at another unit. Under the blistering heat of the lights died , leaving only the suit lights and the muzzle flashes to light their view.

A pair of jet black Ravens , small and agile suits with elongated noses and stubby arms, broke through the front line and sped into a flanking position. Each had four heavy machine guns blazing away at the damaged sections of Ryuki's mech. The surprise attack pushed his mech back onto the slanted floor , the force of the fall breaking off his manipulator arm. He was left with the back mounted weaponry and the small machine guns loaded into the neckline of his mech. A light artillery cannon rolled up his mechs' back on a set of tracks till it reached the remaining shoulder. It then flipped down, clamping onto the torso and releasing a shoulder guard to absorb its recoil. Ryuki's mind was moving so fast he had not realized what the impact of the shell would do. His instincts had overcome his training , leaving the team in danger of being buried under rubble.

He fired one shell from the cannon. It raced upwards past the swarming drones and broke through into the next floor. The explosion lit up the ceiling with molten hot metal, turning the lightless chamber into a hot glowing flow of molten steel.

The corrupted drones were caught in the steel lava , burning up and catching flames. The explosion had cooked them from the inside out and back pressure tore them to shreds. What survived melted away.

"Against the walls!" Ryuki screamed through the radio as the ceiling caved in. Once the jumbled mess of melting scrap settled, the marauding force was a pile of smoldering broken parts and bleeding limbs. The floor shifted again, lifting upwards a few centimeters before stopping.

"This thing is sinking, thats the only way that it could shift so rapidly" Ross yelled out. "You can't be serious, we are on a sinking ship now? Thats a joke only Reaper could make" Barry yelled back. "What the hell would make it do that?".

"The engines. Those engines could be heating up and melting the ice around it" Karin broke the silence. "The nose is shifting up, meaning that the tail is sinking down and the amount of heat being generated by the engines would be enough to do that. Thats the only possible reason for this" Karin concluded.

"We are heading for the bridge. All allied ships have the bridge on the second to last level, and by my count we should be two levels away from it", Ryuki said. "Status!" he barked out.

"I'm out of ammo on my autocannon, missile pods are empty, machine guns have about 100 rounds left, a full magazine on my recoilless rifle. Foot actuators are lagging , tracks busted", Barry replied.

"Two magazines for my flak gun, right shoulder actuator shot to hell. Ive got half a drum of HMG ammo. Leg armor stripped and I think I see holes in my deck. Can you see me waving?" Reaper spoke.

"Claw is broken, no ammo for my guns, down to half a drum of ammo for each of my back mounted gatlings, head sensors are picking up a lot of static and lost my NV capabilities. Computer is reporting dozens of hardware faults and I think Im leaking hydraulic fluid from the reserves. Still got a full magazine of impact grenades for my launcher though" Karin said.

"Lost my entire left arm along with the burst rifle , rocket pods are empty , grenade dispensers still working. Head is totally smashed , Im running on auxiliary sensors. Torso joint is stuck at 120 degrees. General fault warnings with my suit armor. Still have the claw" Ross replied.

"Anyone check in with Wasp and Dizzy?" Reaper asked. No one had thought of what happened to them. The fighting had captured their attention , their singular concentration on the hordes of bulbous mechanical monstrosities. "Well theres no way to call them up, we'll have to find the PA system somewhere" Karin spoke. "Its a miracle our radios work" Ross remarked.

"Ah, excuse me, Im talking to you through a hole in my armor" Reaper replied. It was time to take a moment to do as much repair work as possible.

The loading bay shifted unexpectedly under their multipedal tanks. "What the frak?" Dizzy yelled out. The floor slipped away from her, tossing her spider tank against the far end of the bay. "The thing just turned sideways, what the hell?" Wasp yelled back. They struggled to keep their mechs up right, having four legs did not help much.

There was no solid footing as they slid. Boxes and containers collided into the wall , breaking apart into splinters. "Brace for impact" Dizzy yelled over the radio. As she spoke , the wall approached surprisingly fast. First their legs smashed into the wall, collapsing onto themselves in an attempt to dissipate the sheer force of two 200 hundred metric ton vehicle smashing into a hardened bulkheads.

The walls deformed under the kinetic force with silhouettes of the spider legs poking through like braille. Damage indicators lit up bright red, warnings and cautions blinking rapidly to get Dizzy's attention. Actuator damage, hydraulic damage, reactor warnings , over-pressure systems buckling. Optical sensors were blurry , the lenses had become misaligned from the crash.

"Cap, cap can you hear me? You guys ok? The ship just tilted, whats going on?" Dizzy yelled. All she received back was static. Off to the corner of her eye was the reason. A communication fault had popped up , hidden by the stacks of warnings and alerts. Connection lost, it said. Dizzy rapidly went through a string of expletives in multiple languages, including Jovian, a language known to be much more peaceful than the average guttural language.

"Comms are down, the cables cut" she told Wasp. "Well we are frakked " he replied back. "We need to reconnect, or somehow boost our broadcast range. These damn walls just wont let us through though" she said to herself.

She popped out from her mech and looked around, looking for anything that still functioned. The control room was still active though the room had dimmed considerably. Power failures could turn it useless.

She climbed down as quickly as possible as Wasp told her to stay inside. He could hear rattling, like something crawling through the walls. She made her way across the slanted floor, climbing atop crates and shipping containers. The other side was still fifty meters away when the next quake shook the ship. Her footing collapsed as the crate she climbed over slid away. She caught hold of a light fixture, holding on to it with all her strength. The fixture started to break apart, the screws separating from the base plate and the elbow of the lamp buckling. Her only hope was that the shaking would stop before the light broke free. She closed her eyes and waited for the fall.

The shaking stopped unexpectedly. She opened her eyes to see the new floor under her littered with wreckage. To her surprise though, the metal shipping crates were still in tact and formed a platform that could take her to the control room. She let go hesitantly , rolling into her fall to soften her landing. The next quake could happen at any time so she rushed past splintered crates and piles of tubes and steel girders.

A long and deep blast rumbled out of the walls, like a distant thunderclap slowly expanding from its epicenter. Several more , shorter and higher pitched, rang through the walls as Dizzy reached the control room. She couldn't tell what it was, her mind was too preoccupied to even attempt to make an assumption. Her sole goal, one that seemed to stretch away into infinity , was to access the comms and blast a message to every floor on the ship.

She climbed up , using the bolted down chairs and open lockers till she was within grasping distance of the console that looked to control the comms. She tapped on the screen which brought it back to life. Now what, she thought. What exactly could she do to send out a ship wide message? Perhaps an emergency broadcast, these systems always had something like that. Her tenuous footing though made navigating the menu's difficult, each button press was just a few CM higher.

She could hear rumbling coming out through the walls but it was a different sound that left her uneasy. A skittering noise, like incessant tapping was racing up and down the wall just across from her. Something , or many things , were moving on the other side of the wall. They were scurrying every which way , as if they were looking for something. As she listened , her finger slipped onto the emergency broadcast button. A loud shrill noise, the PA system bursting into life, pierced through her skull.

"This is Lieutenant Dessirae Simmons, can anyone hear me?" she yelled. She perversely hoped nothing would answer her. She asked again, still more silence. One last time, she thought. Now her dread was split between two expectations ,that none of her friends would reply or that something other than human would answer.

She waited , still grappling the side bar and her feet planted on the side of a chair. Her hands and feet hurt from the awkward position , the sweat on her brow dripping down into her shirt. Her palms began to ache and burn from the weight she supported on them. Then a sound, a click ,came from the panel.

"Hey,the emergency channel is for emergencies only" Barry's voice sounded through the speaker. "Considering that the ship looks like its sinking , I would say that would qualify as an emergency" she replied back gruffly. The next voice was Ryuki's. "Hows the situation down there?" he asked.

"Not good sir, our spider mechs are pretty much immobile, cant use them with the way they are. Mission killed. Our supplies are buried under rubble. And something else" she trailed off. "Im hearing something moving through the walls. A lot of somethings. I don't think its safe down here" she said.

An imminent danger. They had to be swift , they had to clear the elevator to pull Dizzy and Wasp out. And with the PA blaring out throughout the ship, it would only rustle more things. "We're gonna blow the blockage , get your power-armor ready and get ready to walk up the elevator shaft. Bring spare armor for the rest of us" he said.

"Roger, we won't be able to communicate while we're getting ready" she replied.

"Understood" , the speaker reverberated with static. The channel closed and the panel returned back to its idle screen. She sighed before letting go to land on the door frame. Her trek back to Wasp's mech was a distant land on the other side of the ocean.

"Alright, get whatever explosives you have left and get to the elevator on this floor. We still have topographical data so we can navigate to where it should be. This will probably mean that some of your mechs are going to be scrapped. We'll figure things out once we get there. We got two people needing a way out, lets get this done" he yelled through his open pilot-deck.


	22. Chapter 22

The powered armor was rather slim and sleek. These specific models were called hardsuits, self adjusting pieces of armor that covered from head to toe in thin but resistant composite hexagonal plates. The armors were all color coded for each member of the team, with Dizzy's suit colored silver and yellow. Each suit slightly different in size and shape to account for the different builds of the team members.

Wasp and Dizzy scrambled for their own on the wrecked spider-tanks , now knowing that the clattering in the walls were the sounds of creatures searching for a way in.

"Damn it, how do they expect us to carry their stuff too? We need to take guns too dont we?" Wasp yelled at Dizzy through his open hatch. "These suits should have a transport mode, you know they can walk on their own right? We just need to guide them over to the freight elevator" she yelled back.

Dizzy pressed down on the collar of the suit to open the back plate. The armored legs separated into two panels , while the arms swept forward. She stepped into the legs while pulling the torso up onto her zero-suit. The sound of compression clamps snapping down in rhythm echoed through the cargo bay. She slipped her arms in, pulling them to her side and then letting the back plate clasp shut on the armored torso. Finally she wore the crown. Its armored plates crawled down her head, covering it completely. A reflective shield came down over her face to completely seal her inside.

She popped open cargo containers stored inside the spider-tank to find the other hardsuits, compressed into blocks. "All here" she whispered, alleviating the fear that she had forgotten to pack the suitcases. The container, with all the gear inside it, weighed nearly 500 kilograms. It wasn't designed to be lifted by a single hardsuit. But it was designed to take punishing falls. She tied a rope to one end of the case and the other end to an exposed steel beam.

The beam was precariously at the edge of failing, jutting out of the wall and swaying with every little tremor. She took a cutting torch and began to melt away the weak joints until the beam broke free. It crashed into the corner, dragging the case out with it. The impact alerted the swarm , their chattering feet turning into a staccato of twitching steps

The hauled two of the containers out using their improvised pulley system. Only one crate of small arms was salvageable from the wrecked cargo skid. Wasp lamented the hundreds of bags of rations strewn across the wall, too many to gather up. As they marched past the wreckage, he did get a chance to take a hand full of packages, though few would stay in his burdened hands. The crates and containers were like coffins, strung along by high tension steel cables, like some kind of spaghetti western. The sense of loneliness the cowboys felt in the middle of an unforgiving landscape was all too familiar to Dizzy and Wasp. Would there be a final showdown? No one knew and that empty space that would have been filled with shouts of war crys was now just a dark corner that quickly grew in size .

"All right, we need to drop our mission killed mechs onto that tumor down there" Ryuki told his gathered team. "Ignite the fuel and set the reactors off. We'll need to get into our suits as quickly as possible. Barry , we're going to need you to use your claw as a makeshift elevator to get them up here quicker. The sooner we can get in our hardsuits, the less radiation exposure".

"Roger, who's mechs are we gonna dump though?" Barry asked from his open pilot deck.

"Reaper is going to have to drop his, anyone not comfortable with their suits? Considering we're about to be blasted by an overloaded reactor". The others nodded their heads. Were they more afraid of the ship than the radiation? They knew how dangerous it would be to continue on in compromised suits. "No sir, we are taking these things to the ninth circle of hell", Karin spoke up.

"Alright, rig him up"

The reactor controls were only accessible externally on the armor. Mostly to prevent pilots from inadvertently purging the radiated molten salts into friendly troops. The control panel itself was underneath a bolted reinforced plate, located underneath the torso, close to the torso panel was a simple monochromatic display, with a mechanical keyboard to go with the command line interface. Karin deftly issued commands, releasing the failsafes and the backup coolant system. The reactor though would still shutdown if the power was cut to the emergency auto-shutdown controller. So instead, Karin commanded it to continue to overheat by faking the thermal resistors, pulling them out and replacing them with metal blocks. "Alright, this should do it" she finished.

"Rig up a countdown,then toss the suit" Ryuki said.

They pushed the suit to the edge and lifted onto a lever made of twisted girders for the final push. Ryuki asked for a volunteer. The person closest to the suit would be hit with the most radiation. With Reaper squeezed into Ryuki's suit, there were few other choices. "Well, it might as well be me" Barry replied.

His mech ambled towards the lever and placed his foot on it with as little pressure as possible. Standing on one foot though was still a test of coordination even for a machine designed to always stay balanced. "Ready here" Barry called out.

By his estimates, Dizzy and Wasp had to be waiting by now. No way to communicate, even yelling wouldn't work with the huge mass blocking the way. "Tap the elevator wall three times then wait for a response", he told Ross.

Three taps went down. It seemed ages had passed before a response. Three taps, the sign of intelligent life. "Sounds like they heard us" Ross radioed. "Alright, hit it Barry" , Ryuki yelled.

His foot slammed down on the lever, tossing the wrecked mech into the elevator shaft. A loud ring went off, signaling the reactor overheating. The leaking fuel drums were seeping fuel onto the twitching cancer. "Brace yourselves!" someone yelled through the radio/

When the molten salt pipes broke open under pressure, the radioactive liquid exploded out , turning into quickly cooling daggers. The heat ignited the fuel into a ball of plasma and heat . The explosion tore the mech's torso apart, tossing its severed limbs out like rockets.. The shrapnel sliced through the tumor, eviscerating it., letting the flames scorch its pulsating belly and the overheated plasma to burn it asunder. The bulb broke free and spurted clear fluid in its dying throbs. It went hurtling down in flames, tumbling like a hot coal.

From below, it looked as if ball of fire was hurtling towards Dizzy and Wasp. They hugged the walls next to the elevator entrance to hide from the excoriating plasma and salt. It passed by , sucking the air out in its vicinity before continuing its fall to the bottom. From behind it came the rocket claw blazing down in a halo of rocket exhaust. The claw clamped down onto elevator doorway ,its jaws biting down hard enough to warp the steel plating. A voice from above echoed down.

"Grab hold of the claw, tie everything youve got to it" the voice yelled. Dizzy and Wasp took heed and quickly assembled the containers and crate into a single package using the high-strength cables. They took the claw and clamped it down onto a makeshift handle they fashioned from reinforced steel platings. "Take the claw up , its got the gear on it" Dizzy yelled. The claw whizzed back up with sparks visible in the background, jumping onto the walls from the traction servo.

It was then that they noticed that the walls bulging. On the other end of the bay, warts growing out of the walls like goose bumps. The walls rattled, the sound of clamoring feet emanating from every corner. The claw came back down just as the clattering grew raucous. They hopped on, holding on for all that is good in life, keeping their eyes above. Whatever lay behind them , that darkness that was bursting at the seams of conscious thought, it was coming for them. Run, run as fast as you can, they told themselves.

The makeshift elevator zipped back up. They found their old friend Reaper in his hardsuit, waiting for them as if an eternity had passed them by. Welcome back, he said. Welcome back to the land of the still living, they thought.

"Sir, the cargo bay is compromised, whatevers down there is most likely going to come up here" Dizzy spoke as Wasp nodded his head with a nervous twitch. "We gotta do something" Wasp said , his voice filled with a shaking but silent anxiety.

"Anything up there we can shoot down to seal that entrance?" Ryuki asked Barry as he peered over the threshold as his hardsuit finished sealing. "Looks like theres some kind of maintenance elevator up there, yellow with black stripes. Looks like its a big one with its own set of counter weights".

"Blow it up" Ryuki said in a monotone voice, a simple order. Ross armed the remaining impact grenades in his launcher and positioned himself leaning into the shaft so that the gimbal turret mounts could point straight upward. A series of red hexagons popped over his vision, floating above him , each one showing the expected impact point of the grenades.

The belt fed launcher swiveled up, audibly creaking from all the damage it had taken. The 20 mm grenades sat inside a drum that hung low on the mechs back. The 3 barrels that made up the rotary cannon began to spin up. The belt was tugged into the firing chamber in quick succession. A zip sound of the cannon firing that burst from the barrels. A rapid succession of explosions echoed down like thunder.

It began to shake loose, the bumble bee carriage swayed under the explosions. Something snapped and it began to hurtle down, smashing its way past overhanging ledges but constrained by the narrow shaft. It was odd how fast it was moving. Air began to flood through the elevator doorway, the massive gust in response to the rapidly descending carriage speeding up.

"Take cover!" Ross yelled as he drove his mech back in. The air pushed him to the ground while the others braced themselves. The screeching elevator raced passed their floor giving them a view of the massive freighter that crashed as soon as it appeared in front of them. A succession of explosions raced up the sides, blowing out the windows and the walls around the elevator.

"Status!" Ryuki yelled. He hoped that no shrapnel managed to pierce their already compromised armor. "Looks like we're all good, though Wasp is complaining about his suit getting slow. The explosion might have jammed something. No shrapnel damage ,sir" Karin reported back as she assumed the role of field mechanic. It was unfortunate though that there were no medics. He knew that this would bring unpalatable consequences.

With the new wall sealing whatever was down there and blocking any means of escape for themselves, their only choice then was to move forward. Not many choices abound, from the lack of any discernable alternate routes to the fact that a swarm of mind-controlled soldiers and scientists were hiding somewhere, along with corrupted mechs and battlesuits.

Ryuki felt it in his bones. A chill that cant be warmed. Deep in his muscles, a tension that couldnt be eased or massaged away. He could hear it, smell it, see it. A creeping darkness that sat just at the periphery of his vision, appearing superficially as a moment of complete darkness and then receding back as soon as he blinked his eyes.


	23. Chapter 23

Ross scooped up Wasp and sat him on his shoulder before opening up his flight deck. Karin , waiting with her flight deck open, formed a small platform for Dizzy to climb up as the servo motors in her arm were slowing to a grinding halt. She climbed the makeshift lift into the compartment when the radiation warnings on her suit began to ring like an especially mad banshee.

"Get back to the cantina, we're gonna climb up" Ryuki called out. The four remaining mechs marched in single file on their oil and blood stained path towards the hellmouth. The swarms chittering feet ,though distant, was working its way up the superstructure through open vents and cracks without hesitation. No obstacle would keep them from their prey. What worried Dizzy was that she hadn't actually seen any of them. "Why would that be a problem?" she asked herself. No amount of bravado could mask the reason. They were the dark abyss, formless and unrelenting devourer of light, without intelligence and lashing out at everything that falls into the maw , was chasing after her and her team.

No xenobiologists available to tell her their weak spots. No armory officer to provide the best weapons against them. No escape and , maybe, no survival. Thats what they were. Death incarnate. No one who has seen them has survived. Her eyes glazed over as she delved into the fear and terror that they exuded. A strange curiosity took over her imagination, creating moments she hoped she would never experience but unable to stop them from forming in her mind. She wanted something, something substantial, to make sense of it all. But nothing, just that incessant noise to tell her they were coming. The shifting dark shadows, with teeth hidden like daggers under cloaks and obsidian eyes shining through the void.

Karin noticed it , the shaking in her hands. This was not like any of the training. There were no tactics to deploy, no technological superweapon that wins the day. All that stood between her and the distended masses of human and alien biology was the armor that she rode in. If she were younger, she would have had the luxury of an inhaler to calm her breathing. Intense physical training was enough to strengthen her lungs but nothing could keep her mind from gasping for air. It was as if her body thought this was all a hallucination , some kind of vision from lack of oxygen. But the bits and bolts that rustled were as real as the slow trickle of hydraulic fluid that dripped onto her shoulders. The cold embrace of reality , oddly enough, cooled her mind. Grace under pressure some would call it. Perhaps it was just fatalism that caused her body to give up.

They reached the mess hall, growing to be an even bigger mess, with a new skylight burning above them. Most of their machines would have been dumped as mission-killed but with dwindling firepower and the fear of alien incursions keeping them inside. As such, getting up through the hole in the ceiling would require finesse that was woefully missing from their beaten and worn machines.

They stood there silently contemplating solutions with every member waiting for the others to make their voices heard before interjecting their own ideas. It seemed nothing would work. They carried too much weight, there wasn't any high-strength cabling, the actuators were shot and more complaints were tossed into the refuse pile.

Dizzy looked around, seeing all the wreckage still burning, the exposed steel frame of the ship dangling like pendulums. She thought of the ladder her father fashioned from wooden crates and steel bars tied together with rope. It didn't go too high since the metal bars were too short but the wooden steps got him high enough to the second floor window of her home to clean the windows.

"A ladder would work right" she said over the comms. "We could make steps, maybe a stair with all these dead mechs and I-bars" she suggested. No one spoke up in dissent. "Alright folks, lets get on it" Ryuki said with his hand to the pile of broken machines and scorched metal pylons.

They began clearing out the remains, creating a clean zone to be the base of their stairs against the corner of the hall. The mechs that still had both arms did the heavy lifting , while the remaining suit dragged the building materials to them. The slow , plodding pace reminded Ryuki of his time spending afternoons after school doing choirs for his parents. It seemed that the boredom was unbreakable , the monotony unshakeable until the completion of what he worked on. Then it seemed amazing that he even succeeded.

His parents had him working on odds and ends. One day it would be to reassemble a two-stroke engine, small enough to fit into the trunk of his fathers car. Another day would be to weld several pieces of metal together. Then the steering rig and counter-ballast. None of it made sense to him. They were disparate parts from a pile of junk, seemingly so different as to be meaningless together.

His father spent all his afternoons for an entire week working in his workshop. All the bits and pieces Ryuki built were gone from sight. Perhaps they were sold off or melted down. What a punishment, he thought, to have all his work just disappear. An insult upon injury it was.

A brisk spring evening , his father finally emerged from the workshop with a smile on his face. He took Ryuki out, insinuating more chores lay waiting for him. He took him around the back of the prefabricated single story blockhouse , right towards the dune buggy Ryuki helped make. It was quite the surprise.

It didn't take much effort to finish building the stair. It wasn't so much a stair as it was a series of ledges that led up into the next floor. Precarious as it was, they still need to go. With nowhere else to turn to and the threat of a swarm of bug-eyed monsters breaking through the walls, the only way forward was up those mechanical corpses.

It took what seemed like hours to get to the top. With their damaged motor functions, every step and every grasp was just one closer to toppling over. Slowly they finally made it up , with Ryuki going up last. They emerged into a dim hall with evanescent shadows cast by yellowed flickering lights.

"You know, I never thought a ship this beat up could continue to function. Very weird" Karin said amongst the clamoring robots. "Sure most of the ship should be functional, even if this one seems decades old, but sitting in an icy grave like this? What keeps it going?" she asked.

"I never asked the base commander when the base was built. The base looked state of the art , but then again this is military hardware. State of the art could be decades old" Ryuki replied. Strange then was the fact that the entire operation was rarely, ever, spoken of. Ryuki himself never heard of it until he received his punishment for insubordination. No one really seemed to care either. It was as if the entire thing was an afterthought or just plain forgotten. Why was that?

They lumbered forward with no particular direction. Maybe an elevator would come into view at the next corner. Or perhaps polyps filled with green goop would be waiting for them. Exhaustion took hold of them both mental and physical. Sleep deprivation had dulled their senses and reflexes. They were prone to hallucinations as the shadows seemed to sway under their own volition. Blinking seemed to take ages and the darkness seemed to grow thicker with every flicker of transient vision.

He noticed his hands were shaking. It was the same as before, when he first realized how much trouble they were in. It started with a tremor and slowly worked its way up his neck. A sharp pain pierced through his skull. A migraine from the tension and anxiety. Terrific luck, he thought. There were no stims for him to jab into his veins and precious few medical kits. He tried controlling his breathing only to remind himself of how shallow his breath had become. It felt as if fluid was building in his lungs, with each breath bringing up a garbled cough. Doctors always said that the bodies immune response becomes suppressed under heavy stress. The same must be happening to the others.

Wheezing,coughing and sneezing. With their bodies so starved for rest and relaxation it was only a matter of time before they began to fall apart. Was the cabin getting hotter? No, that couldn't be right, he felt his bones chill almost immediately. His body felt hot but his skin was freezing. He swore under his breath. Shock. His body was losing heat fast.

"All stop!" he yelled out. If it was happening to him, it certainly was affecting the others. "Get in your hardsuits" he ordered them. When only the sound of wheezing coughs replied, he knew they were just as sick as he was. "Wrap yourselves up, I know some of you are going into shock" he said through a series of coughs.

Wasp and Dizzy remained in their hardsuits while the others took a few minutes to put on their suits. It was fortunate then that these were specially designed winter-suits with electro-thermal layer and condensers The light-frames were small enough to allow them to fit comfortably into the pilot-decks with several ports that connected directly into the combat computers to allow for very precise maneuvers. Their exhausted minds forgotten completely about them.

Sore muscles and back pain started to afflict his team, Ryuki could see. With everyone in their hardsuits he had access to all their vitals. Neural activity indicated they were experiencing sharp acute pain. The rigors of non-stop vigilance was slowly tearing their bodies apart. He could feel it, the depression setting in. No salvation. No hope. The end was coming and it was on a slow march towards death.

No, don't think like that, he told himself. There was no time for fatalism. No time to ponder how painful death would be. He needed to do something , something to refresh their spirits. But with their food rationed to the extreme, there were few amenities he could offer.

Sleep. Thats what they needed. Solace from the days of wakefulness that they endured. It would be dangerous, in the middle of enemy territory as it was. There would need to be guard shifts. And there was no guarantee that they would wake up alive. But it was necessary. The human body , even augmented like theirs, needed time for self repair.

He led them , looking for a secure place to camp. Some place near the middle of the ship, with heavy bulkheads surrounding it. An armory would do nicely. But there were few indications that such a store of arms existed on the floor. Where would a cargo transport store their arms anyway? Why would they be armed in the first place?

The scorched panels he saw before entering inside, those seemed to be burn marks from weapons fire. Maybe it was pirates. Maybe this ship was stolen. But before he could conjure up another reason, they stumbled upon a large set of heavy doors , with explosive warning symbols plastered over it.

They punched at the door, bending it out of shape and slowly prying it off its tracks. The deadbolt locking mechanism was incredibly strong. But no one would have guessed that a platoon of mechs would be knocking on the door. The door was thoroughly weakened by the barrage, its surface covered in deep dents. Ross stepped several paces from it and then rushed at the door.

He crashed through it, breaking it into one large contorted slab Behind it was a treasure trove of small arms. Racks of rifles collecting dust and boxes of power cells waiting to be pillaged. Though the entrance was breached, the armory seemed to be the safest place to be.

At first it seemed like a small cache, probably for emergency use in case the floor was boarded by intruders. They walked around, on foot this time, checking the inventory and the state of the arsenal. As he made his survey, Ryuki slipped and slammed into the rear wall. The hollow gong was unmistakable. It seemed impossible that there was more space beyond the wall, the ships floor plan couldn't account for it.

So where did the ringing echoes come from ?


	24. Chapter 24

"We need to bring this wall down" Ryuki radioed in. As Karin and Ross resealed the door with confiscated plasma torches , the rest of the team assembled at the rear wall. They mulled about, half aware of their surroundings as their minds parsed through the harrowing exhaustion that fell upon them.

"Why" Barry remarked. Ryuki raised his mechs' arm and tapped on rightmost wall from the back. It sound solid and sturdy. He then tapped the rear wall. It sounded like a gong and continued ringing for some time. When the echo came back to them a few seconds later, it became obvious that a huge space lay behind what should be a solid bulkhead.

Barry stepped up pushed against the wall. Dust fell from the roof as the wall bent slightly. It was possible to break through but the effort was likely to damage the already weakened motive systems of their mechs.

"How about we cut our way through?" Karin spoke up after she and Ross had finished barricading the entrance into the armory. She and Barry rumbled through slowly as room for maneuvering was lacking. One gun rack began tipping over as they passed it, prompting Ryuki to attempt to steady it. But the force of his manipulator grabbing the frame caused the rack to break in his hand.

With the guns safely on the floor ,they were ready to start. Cutting process was slow and boring. Watching a flare of plasma burn through metal was mind-numbing, like watching the wick of a candle burning out. They worked out a rough square shape with their torches with a few drops of liquid steel running down from the molten scars as they passed the torches over the wall.

Nearly an hour passed seemingly in a daze. The torches burned out and now a slight breeze passed through the gaps in the wall. Ryuki pushed against the cut section with just the least amount of force to push the wall segment down.

Behind it was a large freight funicular leading far up the ships interior. It seemed at least fifty meters up from where they stood. The soft beating glow of yellow emergency lights traipsed across the walls at the end of the railway.

There wasn't enough space on the funicular to carry all their mechs. Only two could fit, leaving the other five team members out in their choice was easy, the ones that were too damaged to be any good in combat were to be discarded. It was the psychological impact of losing the armor that would be difficult to overcome. The possessed crew members and the corrupted mechs were incredibly ferocious and unrelenting. No one was confident that the hardsuits would survive a single encounter.

Ryuki made his decision. While his mech was still capable of moving and shooting, he would take the ground in his hardsuit. They needed to see him take the first step ,to jar their minds into accepting the path they were taking. If it meant bringing danger upon himself, he reasoned that it was a necessary risk. And though his skin grew cold at the thought of facing the horde, his hands and feet sweating profusely and his head throbbing from anxious stress, there was no other way. He was their leader, if he didn't make the choice then he couldn't expect others to have confidence in him.

"Dizzy, take over my mech. We'll probably need to alternate to keep ourselves warm till we find something useful" he said. "Useful? Thats pretty vague. What exactly is useful ?" Barry asked."Something that could get us off this frozen rock" Ryuki replied. Or at least some heavy weaponry.

Ross left his mech behind, leaving two machines, Karin's and Ryuki's. The moved onto the platform, with the mechs crouching a bit to fit into the tunnel. A control panel at one corner of the funicular glowed softly with several yellow buttons and one large green glowing lever. Ryuki's helmet light focused down on it. Some of the labels had been worn away by rust , leaving behind bits and pieces of words. The lever was obviously a control to start the lift, an example of proper user interface. Someone must have realized that the use of this lift would most likely be in the least favorable conditions.

The motors groaned to life after years of dormancy. The squealing gears sent shivers through the team as if someone had scratched a chalkboard. It jolted up suddenly before rising at a steady rate up towards the next floor.

They waited wordlessly as the lift went up. Their eyes darted from side to side, searching for the first sign of trouble. It would be their ears though that would detect the incessant tapping against the walls.

As they approached the top floor, the funicular slowed down to a grinding stop before locking the platform into place. A large sliding hatch stood ahead of them, covered in glowing markers and lit by pulsing caution lights.

Another panel , like the one on the lift, sat next to the hatch. There were no buttons though, just a flat darkened surface. It was a handprint scanner. Ryuki cursed loudly enough that the others heard. Barry peaked and exhaled loudly , as if admitting defeat.

"So what now? We gotta hack the terminal? We don't have the tools to do something like that" Barry complained. As the others mulled about, alternating between arguments and despair, Ryuki removed the armored gauntlet from his right hand and placed it palm down on the scanner.

What was he expecting? This was his first time on this ship and it wasn't even supposed to be here in the first place. He was confused then when the adjoining monitor displayed a green 'Authorized' text before lifting the hatch up.

This isn't right. The latest in a series of bewildering events and somehow this was the worst one. It was the silent implication that something wanted them to continue on that sent blood rushing to his head. All he could think of was a simple question. Why?

Just like all the other questions that tumbled in his increasingly tired brain, there was no real answer. There wasn't a single sign that anything on board the ship had anything to do with them. It was a transport ship, its wide hallways perfect for transporting bulk cargo and shipping crates. And it was carrying a giant hidden armory that would have violated every safe harbor regulation in the Republic. It was a ship disguised as a civilian freighter, no doubt to transfer weapons illegally.

When the lights switched on, some of which blew out immediately, they saw why this hidden bay was so cavernous. Rows upon rows of heavy armor stood in parade formation in front of them. Tanks, multipede walkers, power-armor and combat mechs.

It was enough to lead an assault on city or trade station. So much weaponry secreted away. There were few who would need so much. And all of them were not friends of the Republic. The Cantilerry family of space pirates had a grudge on the Republic, they certainly would have loved to raid trade hubs with this armory. Or perhaps this was a shipment of arms to the Black Death mercenary corporation. The Steel Wolves or the Couldron-Borne could have been smuggling them. There would be no legitimate reason for a Republic cargo ship to smuggle these, there just couldnt be.

No. No that wasn't true. War has a way of making those with the penchant of morality to delve into the dark heart of the battlefield. There were always those who espoused any means necessary to gain victory. The ones who supplied arms to those who shouldn't have them. And all for the purpose of securing victory. It didn't matter what would happen to the weapons and the partisans who used them. They could disappear and wreak havoc in the shadows. As long as the Republic was the victor.

An arms shipment to a rebel group, that was what this was. Hidden armories filled with weapons for use in clandestine wars. Death squads. The rebels would be allies for the brief time they agreed to our conditions. And when both sides were satisfied with the results, they parted. There was a news report, an archived holovid in the Steelhelm library. It was a rarely watched video, an investigation into the lives of a group of farmers affected by a still smoldering civil war. Twenty years prior, the rebels who declared themselves the saviors of this farm village had tore the local warlord to shreds with suspiciously advanced weaponry. For a time it seemed life would return to normal for them. Then the internecine conflicts started. One group fought the other for control. The fundamentalists slaughtered those who opposed them. The communists did the same. The investigation revealed that two thirds of the population of the village had fled. Only those too poor to leave stayed behind.

This ship was that courier of death. A sad realization, one that was never really dwelled upon until now, when all that was left to them were their thoughts. Ryuki surveyed the war-chest and spotted something of interest. A spiky mane stood above the combat mechs with streaks of gold and silver. He approached it ,ignoring the obsidian eyes of the dead mechs that looked upon him.

It was much larger than a standard mech. An ornamental pattern of swirling golden fire was etched into the black and blue armor of the mech, with streaks of red passing through like a ribbon. Or a river of blood. The head had a visor instead of the open quad-optic scanner. Light reflected from his headlight bounced through the veridian visor to reveal a set of six lens arranged in triangles of three, arranged like the eyes of a person.

Cleaning the dust off the armor revealed an inscription. The mech was called "Lionheart" and the company it belonged to was the Hellriders. That was a familiar name. The Hellriders were a companion group to Ryuki's team. In fact, their last mission was with that company ,before being court martialed.

The Lionheart carried a backpack with two rotary rail mounts on it for a missile rack and folding autogun. In its hands were a pair of autocannons with underslung flamethrowers. On its angled chest was a set of flare launchers and a huge flood lamps. On the shoulders were a set of rocket pods and at the collar were two impact grenade launchers arranged like propped up lapels. On its forelegs were another set of rocket launchers with a large radiation warning symbol plastered over them. Ryuki walked towards the rear of the machine to find six rocket booster ports, one on each leg and four sitting underneath the rotary rails. The back nozzles were spread apart by a center-pack made of a fuel tank and two swiveling arms. The arms sat atop the fuel tank and held in their arms two folding rifles with an ammunition autoloader mounted behind them. Two long flexible antennas were folded over on the back . This was a fierce war machine, its design was definitely for a battalion commander. It gleamed in the low light like a suit of knights armor. But it carried so many incendiary weapons. The ammo bins were all marked with fire hazard warnings, more marks on the torso and the legs. Nearly a dozen fuel pods for the flamethrowers were arrayed on a waist mounted bandolier, each with an autoloader sitting under it.

It had to be for urban warfare. It was too specialized for anything else. A smugglers ship filled with urban combat mechs. The implications were obvious, had the hatch not opened. Ryuki wasn't sure what triggered it but had no intention to leave without investigating. A retractable ladder spun down as if the mech knew his intention. He climbed aboard and then waited for the electronics to warm up. The hatch closed , leaving him in the dark with only silence accompanying him.


	25. Chapter 25

Strangely, his hardsuit interfaced perfectly with the mysterious machine. Why was it responding to him? He had never once been authorized to use anything like it before. And yet it recognized him and opened for him. His mind was dulled from days of unending anxiety and exhaustion that he could not understand why an old ship with old equipment had equipment that was better than any he had seen before. The Lionheart was a type he never seen and only vaguely recognized from its unit registration. An old ship filled with new warmachines ,buried deep under the ice on a planet at the edge of the galactic rim. How does one comprehend that? It seemed like a jumble of words had popped into his tired consciousness to confuse and distract. He had to speak to someone , anyone . Keeping all of these thoughts and feelings bottled up was tearing his psyche apart. Maybe if this were some place warmer and familiar he wouldn't have trouble being a hard-jawed commander whose only words were seemingly strings of orders and commands. But here in the damp and grim , surrounded by walls filled with things looking to make their way inside, there were few if any commands he could give out that could assure success. Get the monkey off his back , he thought, before it was too late.

Status alerts popped into existence in front of his eyes within the confines of his visor. His bracers unfolded themselves into three panels, lifting up at the wrist motor. The hand assembly flipped over with the forearm panels combining to form control sticks. His remaining arm panels slid into slots on the pilots chair, locking into place via magnetic clamps. The helmet flaps splayed out and snapped onto the headrest, forming the data-link to the rest of the mech. A triptych of shin panels formed at each leg before folding down to link to the foot pedal actuators.

His chest plate opened up and snapped onto his back, forming the rest of the chair and clamping him solidly to the pilot bay safety frame. Now the control panels began to light up with their holographic projectors. An iridescent sensor globe flashed into existence with an array of moving contacts ; his team was methodically searching the area around him.

On his screen, six green dots moved through a grid search pattern, steadily making their way across the bay. The sensor globe estimated not just the location but the acceleration ,mass and the elevation as well, using an array of ultrasonic and gravimetric sensors. A red triangle appeared on the display , a small warning that another network of sensors had been triggered. His mind generated the command that ran through his head piece and into the thick cables that stretched out from the chair. The mech flipped through its vision modes to reveal the thermal imaging mode.

While the team were bright as candles in the forest of dormant mechs, it was the walls that gave off the deepest red as if splotches of blood were seeping out from sore wounds. They did not stay still. At the finest resolution , he could see the tips of their bug legs radiating heat in a 6 point star formation , tapping along the walls on barbs. When the thermograph warped , the center of the hot splotches turned cold blue. The walls were splitting open.

"Get in a mech now!" he screamed through the radio. "Hostiles incoming!" he screamed once more. His mind raced, going through the start up and arming process. He grunted and huffed as if a massive amount of physical exertion was needed to move the firing pins and the ammo loaders. The red "MASTER ARM" message bled through all the holographic displays.

Dizzy and Reaper were running on instinct. A grid pattern search was the easiest to handle with their tired heads ,reeling from no sleep. Go down on column, turn, go down the next column until there weren't any left. Reaper babbled on about a theory he had. That there was a multiverse and all the possible universes were connected intrinsically. Every time a decision is made, a new universe springs up. One where the decision was made, one where it wasn't and an infinite stretch where the decision was just slightly different.

Dizzy scoffed. The physics of such a structure were beyond anything that the modern science could test. It wasn't a theory, it was just a bunch of words strung together. And even if there some truth to it, what would be the point? If all these different universes were distinct and separate then there was no reason to care about them. There was no way to interact. Reaper couldn't explain how it would work. But that didn't stop him. After the last few days, he knew that something was up. A ship from the near future , sitting under ice for decades and filled with otherworldly monsters. It was the plot to a science fiction book.

"That is just stupid. That would mean that this ship is from the future. Maybe this thing was always here and the guys who abandoned us were stealing tech from it. What if all our stuff was derived from this thing?" Dizzy blurted. "Ah slag!" she yelled out.

She had just committed the same transgression that she had only a few moments earlier admonished Reaper for. A speculation that sounded incredibly unreliable. What, she thought, what the hell? That would mean that their mechs were based on designs dug out from an ice mine. And everything they used, their arms, their hardsuits, had to have bits and pieces of tech from a ship that oddly enough was nearly the same as one being constructed out of a Republic dry-dock.

What the hell, none of that is right , she told herself. Reaper was just a conspiracy theorist. Well, not only. She knew something wasn't right. Although she knew that one day first contact would be made, she never imagined it like this. She had an entire collection of Star Trekkers videos that her father gave to her. It was the exhilaration of exploration and the possibility of meeting new and unique species. The production values were outright terrible in many of the videos but the awe of feeling connected to the universe had overwhelmed any loss of disbelief. Thats why she joined the Star Corps. But as it happened, being in the Star Corps and being an explorer were two different things.

She excelled in tactics and maneuvering but that wasn't enough to join the exploration and recon divisions. She made a mistake thinking that all she needed was a desire to see distant stars. It was the pilots who could fly the ships single-handed that were rewarded with that. She was suitable to be a soldier, an armarine to be shipped into battle aboard battlecarriers and drop ships. She could reach those distant twinkling stars when something near it needed to die.

For Reaper though, that didn't matter. The guns , the missiles, the explosives. Thats why he joined. He loved watching the old war movies his grand father collected. Brave men and women ,fighting against all odds. Burning with hot blood and blazing into battle spewing out fire like a frakking demon borne dragon! That was his aim, to join the guys who had the same idea. The Hellriders, the most elite dropship troopers in the entire Republic Star Corps, were the ones who shared his passion for explosions.

But it wouldn't be his choice. The personality tests were suspicious at first and then completely obvious. What seemed like an everyday interaction with a lieutenant or a lunch break with captain were tests to see how he would handle different social situations. They needed people who could handle themselves well. That was the problem. His mouth would not stop talking about his conspiracy theories. Aliens, reptilian overlords, robotic dopplegangers. He had all of these theories prepped as if for a galactic convention for nutjobs and crazies.

No, that wouldn't work with the Hellriders. They were the hardest and smartest of the entire military. They didn't need to add insane conspiracy theories to their roster . Rejected. That was the final decision. But his acumen with high explosives kept him from being dumped right out. He was allowed to stay ,keep his rank. Just not anywhere near sane people. He had an effect on them, something akin to a virus. Infecting them with stupid conspiracies and filling them with worthless paranoia.

So off he went, to become a mechgrunt, an armarine to serve as a first line combatant. It didn't seem to bother him much. All this was just plainly a stepping stone for him. What he was looking forward to was joining up with the secretive clandestine organization he called "Section 86". Often he would ramble about it, a group of conspirators experimenting on aliens ,contacting advanced civilizations and developing doomsday weapons for when humanity would need them.

The fact that he was one of the first to make first contact with a truly alien species, one that wasn't just an analogue to a terrestrial animal, one that was completely beyond any known form of life was lost on him. They were xenos to be burnt to a crisp without a second thought. No need to communicate, no need to suss out the details of the conspiracy that Reaper had only moments before contact had explained was the source of these interdimensional monsters. No interrogation and no autopsies. Just the rush of fear pumping into his flight or fight response, often a coin toss of a reflex. Crashing the land-runner as he ran from the first sight of alien animals or igniting flamethrowers at the first sight of zombified mechs.

All his the talk about shadow governments and alien interference were just to distract himself from the dire situations he found himself. Concocting a world where everyone had a secret identity and mission, where there were agents lurking in the shadows waiting for him to make a mistake, made him feel important. But it also rationalized the fears and anxiety he faced with every combat drop he endured. He had to fight the organization or they would win! Even if it meant sacrificing himself on an arid dust planet to secure a refueling depot that was drained of fuel. But now, with a real shadowy threat, none of that mattered. He never thought what he would do if faced with a bonified conspiracy. He never considered what he would do. No amount of preparation, no amount of knowledge of the Illuminati or Section 86 prepared him. His hands trembled at the thought of seeing the full form of the nightmarish creatures that were gnawing through the walls. Flight or fight, an equal chance of both. That was the most his mind would allow.

But right now, walking with his protective hardsuit partially open, all he could talk about was the conspiracy that brought this ship from a parallel universe. To say he had the best explanation for all the disturbing events leading to this would mean that no one else could even comprehend why it happened in the first place.

Karin and Ross were professionals. They took the grid pattern search seriously, marking all items of interest with neon reflective tape. They marked their path with glow sticks and kept their suit lights at the maximum brightness. They marked munition crates and ration boxes. They tapped fuel drums to see if they were full and unplugged rocket pack nozzles to check for blockages.

Karin's speciality was field mechanics. She had been a gear-head since she could remember, always by her father's side while he rebuilt classic cars. She would watch him methodically machine and polish parts into mirrored surfaces. It was a wonderful sight to see blocks of dull metal turn into cams and gears that seemed cut from diamond.

School proved to be too slow for her. Her desire to build was slowed by the need to pass certification exams. Eventually she lost her appetite for school altogether and instead taking up an apprenticeship in her fathers manufacturing plant. Her mother, a kind woman who only wished for her daughter to advance beyond dangerous physical labor into the fields of science was at first disappointed. But the smile Karin had when she worked days on end on a pet project was enough to prove that whatever Karin was doing was happy. If she was happy, so was her mother.


	26. Chapter 26

When the chance to join the mechanized armor corps revealed to her, she knew took it with gusto. Working with giant hulking machines, some nearly fifty meters tall was fantasy she had. Seeing videos and pictures just weren't enough for her. She needed to get into the gears and guts of these hardened machines. The first one she saw was at a parade on Remembrance giant arthromechs marched in lockstep bristling with weapons (though disarmed for the parade). They towered over her and the sheer scale of them was awe inspiring. She would often point out this as the point in her life when she fell in love for the first time, followed by hearty laughs.

When she told her parents her decision, her father screamed at the top of his lungs. No child of his would waste away as cannon fodder. Her mother though sat silent. For years she had supported Karin's "hobbies". She thought it would help her gain skills to become an engineer or scientist. But the military was not what she was expecting. What was Karin thinking, her mother thought. Why do something so rash, when there were more safe paths. She had spent the next month bogged down in punishments, though strangely she did not

There weren't any mechs of the scale she had saw at the parade in civilian use. And there probably wouldn't ever be, Karin surmised. The only way to work on them was to enlist. Her mind had reached a tipping point. Join now or never get the chance. She knew her parents well, they would do everything they could to stop her. She needed to join quickly and made the mistake she would regret for years.

Enlistment meant that she would be at the mercy of the military. Officer school was reserved for those who had been accepted through university referrals and the junior military corps. Tough luck, the boot camp commander told her. She would go through the grueling and arduous training with no very little chance to be selected for Armored Warfare school.

That didn't stop her. She pushed her body ,through mud and misplaced shrapnel. She spent little time talking with her squadmates. Her free time was filled with obsessive re . She watched others bug out , running into the arms of parents. They took the path of shame, a walkway designed to reveal to the rest of the recruits what failure looks like. It was horrifying for those who walked it. But the perverse idea that it would reinforce the resolve of the remaining cadets was wrong. Karin didn't care. Her thoughts concentrated into a fine blade-like point to pierce through obstacles towards her goal to join with the towering titans of the battlefield.

Her resolve impressed the base commander. His recommendation would only go so far though. All that work, all the tears and the blood were betrayed. They didn't accept her into the AW officer school. Instead, much to the confusion to all around her, she was punished with becoming the chosen few to become command officers. Her dour attitude towards such an amazing achievement was confounding.

It seemed obvious to her. Fail. She didn't want to be a commander. She wanted to pilot those towering mechs. She didn't care about anything else. Her life's dream was to feel the ground rumble under her as she marched like a steel mountain. Failure was an option. It was obvious to her that they found her to be highly competent. They wouldn't toss her into the teeming masses of cannon fodder. They would acquiesce to her unspoken demand. They would give her the warmachine of her dreams.

From command school she went to electronic warfare. She wasn't so upset ,though even more time would be lost before she had the chance to climb into a pilot's deck. She positioned herself to lead up ground ELINT (electronic intelligence) elements, shadowy groups of light and mobile troops with the sole purpose to gather data. Finally, after years of work, she was closing in on her dream. Her ELINT unit turned out to be a company of light combat frames, machines close to 8 meters tall, designed to be speedy and carrying enough electronic equipment to be backup command and control units. Each frame could command hundreds of drone tanks and soldiers if needed. With their back mounted radisks (rotating radar disks) and a plethora of antennas, they silently skulked into the battlefield, often behind enemy lines with no support and few arms. It was exhilarating. The risk was life-threatening. But the tools of the trade were beyond anything she had ever seen. She felt as if power coursed through her hands , into the control panels that lined the joystick and through the holographic displays of frequency modulators and focusing arrays.

But she made a mistake, one that she wasn't sure that she regretted. When she became the commander of her own unit, their first mission was into a city that was infiltrated with Confederate rebels. Collecting information was difficult due to the buildings blocking line of sight and making every turn into a hesitant step into tank fire.

The rebels had forced the city dwellers to remain confined in their homes, to be used as human shields and to temper any thoughts of invasion. She was sent to find their heavy weapons and to mark them for precision orbital strikes.

She didn't realize how crowded the buildings were, nor did she think of how accurate a precision orbital strike was. They gave her a mission to do, that was all she considered. The initial EMP shockwave raced through the enemy ranks like chained lightning. The following rain of hypervelocity spikes turned the ground into a crater. The buildings adjacent to the crater cracked. Then the screams roared through her headset. The buildings began sliding and then spliting open. The silhouette of a body , a slow moving form seemingly suspended in the air, was all that she could remember when HQ rescinded her command afterwards.

It wasn't the end for her. She had become an available resource. The Void Walkers had summoned her. Few ever saw their crews. Fewer had seen their mechs. These soldiers were erased from time and space, only existing as shadows. Furtive glances out to deep space would bring about their presence into the periphery of vision. These phantoms did what seemed like the fever-dreams of conspiracy theorists. Even darker than clandestine , they killed, captured or destroyed anyone and anything. Even those within the hallowed ranks of the Republic star corps. Abiding by no laws, they were more tamed monsters jostling at the chain that held them to the loosest of battle protocols.

So what did they need with her? Such an elite force required the utmost in combat performance. Karin's experience was mostly in e-war and forward operations. She was in no mood to stuff her closet with skeletons. She didn't see herself as a machine of death. Even if she piloted warmchines, she looked at them more as pieces of art than weapons. But here, with these dour and brutish soldiers, marked by shrapnel scars and burns, there was no art.

"The reason you are here today is because you have excelled at your duties. You sacrificed your conscience to complete the mission" , the voice inside the opaque helmet said. That couldn't be right. Thats wasn't at all right, Karin thought. She didn't do it on purpose. She didn't mean to endanger the lives of civilians.

At the same though, she didn't even consider it. It was only after the buildings began to topple around her that she realized that those shadows weren't pieces of debris falling to the ground. Their lives had become mere background details. Noise to be filtered out. Distractions. The success of the warmachine was not counted in lives saved. That was what the Walkers were looking for. The soldier willing to commit the acts necessary to succeed. Her stomach tumbled, her mind turned and her body shook. Apathy had turned her into a machine of death without her consent.

With nowhere to hide from that guilt, she resigned herself to take her place alongside the mercenaries and cutthroats the did the jobs that the Sol Republic couldn't do itself. She couldn't face her family, her friends, her would greet her with smiles and laughter when she sorely wished for punishment. But it would never happen. She was a hero, one who made a mistake. She was alone. She was a Void Walker.

Ross followed the footsteps of his forefathers and foremothers. His father was a decorated colonel. His mother was a battalion commander . Rose, his sister, was a pilot and Dan, his little brother, became a propulsion officer. Everyone was proud of the family's history of military duty. They felt a camaraderie that most families could never enjoy. They were bonded by blood and steel , their minds in lockstep to military duty.

Ross, though, was unreceptive to the whole scheme. Everyone seemed to just let others make the decision to join for them. They all seemed so sure of themselves when they were helped into the decision to join. It seemed genuinely inhuman that they exuded such confidence in a decision with life altering ramifications.

Under hushed voices they spoke of how he lacked bravery. How he would break family tradition. That he was selfish. Selfishness! He was astonished at such turn of logic. His desire the see the world instead of being the force that would corrupt and destroy it was selfishness. Right, he said to his family. Absolutely. The sarcasm dripped so heavy but it only fooled his family into thinking he was repentant.

It wasn't for selfishness that he didn't want to commit to duty. He didn't want to be a chained to a rigid command structure, to have orders barked at him and to do as he was told. He went to the Republic University in Gliese , instead of joining the junior corps like his brother did. He took up Hypervelocity communications , experimenting with information catapults that launched packets of suspended radio waves through space in bubbles formed from Alcubierre rings. He was proud of his work, proud to know he had brought people closer with their friends and family.

His family wasn't as impressed. Though they never said anything bad about his work, they had never spoke highly of him either. He was just there, a presence that had no weight. While they regaled each other with tales of heroism, whether true or not, no one asked him about the discoveries his team was making.

He never expressly disavowed joining the Star Corps. He had just not thought it was right for him. But his research had gained the eyes of the upper echelons. They were shadowy figures that contacted him, never identifying themselves affirmatively, just merely implying who they were and why they were so important.

They wanted to give him a military commission, a fully stocked lab and a staff of the most intelligent researchers. He said yes. He thought it was a great opportunity to advance his career. Perhaps now, he thought, his family would actually give a damn about his work. Now that the Star Corps was recruiting him into their program, they had to treat him better. All those years of being ignored , repaid with the commendation of the highest echelons of the Star Corps command.

He never was told exactly what he would be doing. Nor did he pay attention to the terms of the contract he signed, one that was whisked away for "safe keeping" away from him before he could realize what he did.

He discovered soon enough what he had become a part of. His role in the team was to crack the encryption used in the hypervelocity communication network that his colleagues had made.

He adamantly refused to destroy what others had worked so hard to do. But his enlistment contract was clear, if in a obtuse manner. If he didn't accept the terms, his alternative was to become a grunt in the Void Walkers. He would not sacrifice the integrity of the work his friends had done. Instead, he accepted the four year deployment as the electronic warfare specialist of the Void Walkers.


	27. Chapter 27

It pained Ross to think that he had allowed himself into such a position. His mind was in the clouds the moment he signed the document. Instead of concentrating on what was in front of him, he looked far into a future that would never exist. And now he lived through the punishment every waking moment.

His first assignment was with the Codebreakers, a sub-group of field operatives working on breaking myriad of encryption schemes. The encryption method for the quantum communication system was too complex for them to break and even his own knowledge of the system would not have been enough without critical hardware that only the research divisions were equipped with.

It made no sense that they would stuff him away like this. They could have forced him to do the work he signed on for. No, this wasn't because of the contract he signed. He was on the threshold of the front lines. He would see the death and destruction wrought by war. They were slowly pushing him into combat, ever so slowly. Why? What was the goal?

Maybe there wasn't any. Maybe all that happened was a piece of paper,worded poorly and drafted by someone who had only ever spoken with a Sir prefacing anything said. The cold disinterest in any kind of fairness had caught him in its uncaring grasp, to wait to be discharged or killed in combat.

His first taste of war was on a convoy that he was given assurances would be far away from any combat. Of course, there was no assurances that this was a true statement. When the green flares of light came crashing down with thunderous blasts he knew what was the truth. The mortars had destroyed the first transport and the last one, sandwiching everyone into a narrow path with bramble and trees lining the road making off roading difficult.

He took his rifle and jumped into a ditch with the hope that lying still with his head down would save him from death. That wasn't what saved him. It was the corpse of the driver lying on top of him that saved him. When the marauders had left , after a few parting shots into whoever survived, he was left alone soaked in a pool of blood.

It took him two days to get back to base. They looked him over, checked him psychologically and determined he wasn't broken enough to be discharged. A dark figure was with the doctors who didn't say a single word until he was the last one left in the examination room when the doctors left.

"How does it feel? Do you think you made the right choice when you backed out of the job you signed up for? You can still come back. Your colleagues will never know you were working for us, they won't know that you helped us break their quantum encryption. Obviously I can't force you to..." the dark figure said. His hood had concealed everything but his mouth. And he spoke with a slight grin on his face, knowing he had backed Ross into a corner. Ross considered it. He was reaching the breaking point; he could feel the cracks forming in his psyche. "No" ,Ross finally mustered.

They had assumed that he wouldn't survive , that he would be ejected and that his professional career would be over when they surreptitiously leaked documents about his involvement in domestic spying.

He survived. Even with the men and women who surrounded him dying one by one. He continued. The Void Walkers found him soon after and gave him a choice. Work for them and his contractual obligations would be rescinded. He could have stayed a grunt, risking his life on the frontlines. But it was a way out of the constant cycle of death. He never thought he would end up under a kilometer of ice, surrounded by shadows that hid horrors. What was that saying? Out of the frying pan and onto the bullet train to Hell?

When Karin and Ross heard Ryuki scream through the radio they rushed to the closest cover, which happened to be at the base of a heavy artillery biped. "They're coming through the wall!" Barry yelled back. On infrared , the walls turned into hot blisters , popping off into dozens of tiny squirming bugs. they crawled up the walls and onto the roof , making a slow push towards the center of the room. The others dashed to defensible positions, picking up whatever weapons they could and prepared for what could be their last fighting moments of life.

Ryuki began firing off his autocannons and machine guns in bursts. The tracers raced across the room before exploding on the walls in a fiery splash of shrapnel. A squealing hiss sounded out through the armory . It was the sound of bugs cooking in their carapaces.

Barry and Wasp hid , huddled around the armored leg of a multiped tank. The ruckus battle had drowned out his inner thoughts and scrambled his situational awareness. It seemed to him that the entire world was crashing down on him. He didn't know where to shoot or even what to shoot at.

Wasp fell into a comatose state, whispering to himself as he held tightly to the rifle as if it was a lifeline in a torrential monsoon. Barry was too distracted to concentrate on being afraid. When clicking steps approached their position, Barry relied on years of ingrained instinct. He peeked out from behind cover to see a weird mass of biomechanical parts welded together into an ant-like body. Two huge arms stretched out from the thorax with serrated clamps for hands , like a weaponized crab. Its head was bulging and pulsating but its eyes zoomed and scoped like a lens aperture . Its head tilted and swayed erratically like motors in its neck had become old and rusty , the gears undoubtedly grinding away into nothingness.

"Well ,aint that just my fraking luck" he said before kicking Wasp out of his delirium. "Do you smell that?" Barry asked him. Smoke wafted through the bay ,mixed in with the scent of burning wreckage and fuel. "That, that's victory" he yelled out before holding down the trigger as he sprayed down the ant-crab. Blue flames erupted from his mag-rifle as the rounds flew out at a high multiple of the speed of sound. Each bullet exploded on the carapace hide of the bug, cracking it open like a egg and spilling its guts all over the riveted steel ground.

Wasp was still on edge, the battle sending shockwaves up his spine and the repeated concussive blasts keeping him on his ass. He covered his ears , to protect what little hearing he had left. His eyes raced looking for something useful, anything to keep his head from exploding. He looked up to see the open pilot-deck of the mech they sat under. His scrambled thoughts merged into one consistent idea. Jump in. Death was waiting for his decision.

He grabbed hold of the ladder rungs that lined the leg of the mech and pulled himself up as quickly as his tired body let him. He bounded up onto the side torso but one hand had slipped off the torso ladder leaving him hanging. He wedged his feet into the elbow of the mech and pushed himself back up into the pilots deck. Before he could even take a seat , the bay closed in around him ,sealing him inside. Lights on the console began to blink slowly and screens began to flicker on. Holographic displays with munition counters, radar and suit status popped into view, following his gaze as he looked over the familiar controls.

He didn't realize that the authorization check had been completed and he had been cleared to take control. It would have been a startling realization to know that something so old would respond to him. There was too many contacts blinking in front of him ,distracting him from the tiny portrait at the base of his seat with an image of what looked to be an wrinkled and grey version of himself casting a dour look back at him.

He took control , testing out the arm manipulators , pressing down on the foot rudders to advance a step that squashed a creeping xeno. When the force of the foot knocked Barry off his feet, he let loose a string of colorful Irish swears, some dating back thousands of years , as if his lineage had decided to use his mouth to voice their incredible disdain for whoever knocked them on their asses.

"What the hell!" he yelled out as the dormant mech burst into action with a swing fist that crushed a small horde of beasts under its reinforced steel knuckles. The floor began to shake when Barry could hear Ryuki yelling through his headset. He couldn't understand the rapid,jittery voice that erupted from his ear piece and had no way of knowing that above him a vast metallic shockwave was slowly ripping open the roof.

Wasp could feel the rattling through the thickened hide of his mech and switched to thermal vision to scan the room for the source. A temporary blindness swept over him when he cast his sight towards the roof. The white hot roof was melting away with a bloody red blot expanding out the epicenter of the heat map.

A set of legs pierced through the softened roof , covered in bulging,pulsating veins and polyps. It was unmistakably the armored legs of a supermassive multipede walker, a landstrider , the ultimate weapons platform. Through the gaping hole, its head slowly emerged, covered in compound eyes unlike those of a spider.

Wasp lost control of himself , firing off all his guns at the roof with little effect as the massive body began to disgorge. The crab-like bugs that swarmed around him continued to advance towards him while Barry desperately attempted to get Wasp's attention.

Barry's desperation overtook his rampant sarcasm as he could feel the swarm closing in on him. No jokes, no quips . There was nothing in him but an intense fear of being torn to pieces, or worse, a slow drawn out death as his body is consumed by picky eaters. He snapped the rifle in his hand towards Wasps mech and aimed for the head. A burst of fire flashed into the plasteel visor that protected the head cameras.

Wasp eyes strained from watching the flashes of gunfire directed at him. The pain jostled him from his delusional state enough to make him realize that he had left Barry outside in his haste to find safety. He switched to his ground facing cameras to see Barry huddled up against his mech with his head in his hands.

He flicked his wrist to open up the pilot deck and unfurled a rope ladder down. The counterweights on the ladder smacked Barry on his back , sending a stinging pain through his neck , prompting another string of Irish he realized that the ladder was what hit him, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and began to frantically climb the swinging lifeline.

Barry crawled onto the floor of the pilot deck, huffing and sweating profusely , waiting for the bay to close up. "You damn stupid idiot!" he yelled. "Do not do that again!" he said as he gulped down fresh air.

"Barry, Ryuki is saying that we need to regroup, that giant spider mech is wrecking the place. He says the floor won't be able to hold all this extra weight" Wasp spoke with exasperation in his voice. "What about the others?" Barry asked while still gasping for breath with his back to the ground.

Wasp nodded his head. He only knew as much as Barry. There was no indication, not a single radio message from the other teams. For all they knew, there were only the three of them. Wasp continued to fend off against the smaller biomechanical crabspiders with only bursts of his weapons in the hope of conserving ammunition. The mech paced slowly back towards Ryuki's position while the shadow of the giant cast down on them.


	28. Chapter 28

The loud crash of the giant spider-bot was forceful enough to knock Dizzy and Reaper to the floor. Momentum had been lost and now the swarm was bearing down on them too quickly for their rifles to have an effect. They crawled before getting back up , trying to keep moving through all the chaos any way possible. Tracers smashed into the walls above them as someone was shooting indiscriminately . White flares raced up to bath the armory in a white glow , revealing the monsters hiding in the shadows.

The metallic sheen of their bodies merged into the pulsating flesh of the parasite that grew out of them. Warped jaws extended out from their chests with the hosts head peaking out above like a crocodile's eye above water. They could see the rows of teeth on the mouth reciprocating with anticipation. Did they eat to survive or was it all just to terrorize them? Dizzy wanted to know but her body wouldn't allow it. Instinct had taken over, with her hand firmly on reapers collar, pulling him back up while he fired two carbines akimbo.

Instinct would only get her so far. There was nowhere to hide, no extraction point, no evac helicopter waiting for them. No escape. All that was left was to fight, to the death. The pit of Dizzy's stomach felt heavy upon that realization. Her legs burned as she raced from corner to corner trying to stay just a few steps ahead. Then the rumbling approached.

The spider was tearing the ground apart. It was purposefully digging through; it was obvious it was trying to cause the floor to collapse. Dizzy yelled out through her comm, her voice exuding with pained exhaustion. "Its trying to tear the floor apart. Its trying to collapse the whole damn thing!" she said in rapid succession.

She could feel her legs wobble. Behind her was Reaper, running as hard as he could. No ammunition left to fight back. Running was only leading them closer to a sure death , Dizzy thought. Her feet began to grow heavy . The burning in her legs were replaced with sharp, stabbing pains. Balancing on such weak legs proved transient. She tripped over the leg of one an armored thinktank, smashing her knee into the ground. A howl of pain erupted from her as the shock raced up through her knees , the pain streaming directly into her neck and shoulders.

While she remained stunned by the pain , her eyes caught the sight of an open hatch in the thinktank. "Ah frak it!" she yelled. With Reaper in tow, she jumped into the cramped spaces of the tank.

The crew compartment wasn't built for relaxation. Even though there were enough seats for three people, the chairs were wedged up together like slices from an apple. The majority of the crew cabin was filled with electronics, logistics computers and electronic warfare consoles. The air seemed to suck out as the hatch sealed shut behind them.

"Ok ok ok ok. I hope this thing still works" Dizzy spoke with exasperation. Once the holographic displays came online she saw that the systems were very similar to the Zephyr mechs. It was awfully familiar, like a slightly modified copy. There were little bits and pieces that were different, the slight hue , the panel shapes, the opacity of the holograms. It seemed just different enough to be disconcerting. The master system status popped into view ,glowing a deep green. She sighed and closed her eyes. Her hands jittered against the control sticks. Sweat sauntered down her forehead as she marshalled her concentration.

Down went the foot pedals, launching the thinktank forward at high speeds. The sudden acceleration surprised her , causing her to clip a stack of crates as she regained control. She slammed into the armored foot of a heavy mech before finally bringing the thinktank back in line.

As she became accustomed to the machine, Reaper hailed everyone for their status. He could hear them fighting , each one trying just to stay alive against the onslaught. Ryuki's orders had just come in after Reaper had confirmed that Wasp had gained control of a mech. It was three simple words that had the force of a detonating shockwave. Brace for impact.

Only a few moments later , the ground began to quake. The thinktank's squat stature helped it maintain its balance but the surrounding mechs began to tip precariously. Even with the webbing, designed to keep the mechs steady under the gravity shockwave of a ship exiting from an Alcubierre bubble, was not enough to keep them standing. The ground began to whine and tear like paper as the mechs toppled over. The giant strider looming over them fired off a massive red beam of energy down into the ground , with the surrounding area erupting into giant orange and yellow explosions. Ammunition dumps cooked off in the intense heat of the blast and set off a chain reaction of secondary explosions. Metal shrapnel flew up into the air like fireworks as the ground began to give way.

The red and green beam of energy that shot out from the maw of the strider splashed onto the ground, a river of energy coursing through the armory and melting away all that came in contact. The ground melted around the epicenter and began to liquefy into puddles of molten metal.

The underlying support structure gave way almost immediately. No engineer would have envisioned such intense heat to be contained within the hull of the ship and never thought to use heat resistant metals. Thus the super-structure collapsed as the load-bearing beams withered in the super hot plasma that flowed over them.

Ryuki dashed for the closest girder he could find that was still standing. There was no time to gather the others as he watched to floor ripple under him. Rows of supply boxes disappeared into the ground in front of him. Another shockwave passed under his mech, lifting it up into the air and slamming it against the wall behind him.

Giant strider platform began to slowly disappear into the ground as it fell through the hole its plasma cannon created. On its way down, it grabbed hold of the floor with its blade like limbs and cut open the sinkhole. The floor suddenly dropped away completely into the darkness underneath him. Immediately his radio began to blare out. His team ,yelling as they fell down into the chasm.

His own mech was losing its grip on the girder. Below him he could see jagged spikes formed from a busted pile of machinery. As his grip slipped, he quickly tried to gain momentum to launch himself away from the spikes. He kicked his legs forward to propel himself backward. The mech's feet slammed into the wall , allowing him to kick himself forward. With a burst from the thrusters , he leapt across the pit onto a toppled stack of supply crates. He crashed through them until finally he landed on solid ground. The impact rocked the pilot seat hard enough to cause sudden onset of vertigo.

The displays turned to static, flashing in and out of existence. The compartment had gone dime , leaving only the red self-powered emergency lights to illuminate. Water dripped in through unseen cracks and sparks flickered around him. Chromatic fluid seeped through the pilots deck as the damage control nanofluids set out to repair destroyed electronics. A small holographic image popped into view showing the progress of repairs. Thankfully the mechanical rigging systems were still intact. None of the ferrohydraulic lines were damaged meaning that the limbs should still be functional. The primary navigation computers came back to life with a whirring click followed by a map hologram showing Ryuki's approximate location.

It didn't seem right. The inertial compass showed he had fallen nearly a hundred meters down. That would mean that the strider had ripped open a gaping hole down the inside of the ship, incredibly close to the auxiliary reactors. One poorly aimed shot would have pierced the containment vessels which would have caused a massive radiation leak, one that would have been able to melt right through the thick hides of their armor.

The mech slowly came back to life. Automated start-up had successfully restarted the microfusion reactor from its emergency shutdown mode. Ryuki flexed the robot's arm to see the extent of the damage. The elbow actuator seemed to be slower than usual but there was no indication that there were any faults. The knees were banged up but aside from scuffs and gouges running down its shin , the legs were functional.

Weaponry though was another matter. the plasmathrower fuel cannisters were automatically purged when he jumped down. The munition holsters though were still in one piece though it would be more difficult to know if they still worked. The rockets were sealed tight inside the pods and racks , hopefully protected from the sudden drop.

As he regained his wits , Ryuki began to realize the reactors had been running when the floor caved down. Structural breaches would force reactors to shut down to prevent anti-matter from leaking out and damaging the entire level. But these were humming along as if the world was rock-solid.

Something was forcing these reactors to stay online. His Lionheart was unimpressed. Its computers booted up in a slow, painfully slow , process. Machines didn't have the human urgency that the pilots had. It was doing its own damn thing and didn't care about anything else. It almost seemed to be mocking his frustration and exhaustion. Another headache to go along with the one throbbing at the center of his brain. Ryuki coughed as he shouted at the damn thing . It was all he could do as he came to the slow realization that whatever was controlling the reactors had the intention of leaving this iceball.

The radio systems didn't turn on as quickly as he yelled for. It needed to pass through fuel line integrity checks and battery mode cycles before it was satisfied to let him to scan the radio channels. He dialed in the short range channels, pressing the glowing orange up and down triangles in the clear-screen display at his fingertips till he picked up something other than static.

They were coughing, bleeding and hurting. He could hear their voices calling for help , each retransmitting the same basic feeling of hopelessness. No one was in shape to offer any rescue. He could feel his consciousness drifting with only hunger pangs keeping him from slipping under. A small trickle of blood dripped down from under his helmet.

His body was bruised and tired. His voice cracked as he attempted to hail his team. Breathing felt like a chore. Quick and short breaths weren't enough to keep him conscious. He took his helmet off, gasping for air. The biometric telemetry monitor that hovered above his head showed his oxygen levels lower than normal. His pulse was laboring to keep up. He breathed in deep then coughed up again. In the silence between his coughs he could hear the fluid in his lungs stirring.

He cleared his throat as best as possible, spitting up whatever he dredged out onto the dimly lit cabin. When he was done excavating all the mucus that jammed up his lungs , he set out to broadcast on the multifrequency widebands. "If you can hear me, call in" he said.

Then silence. Maybe they hadn't heard him. Or maybe their radios weren't functioning properly. They could have passed out. Or maybe they were dead. At this point it seemed to matter little. What was there to do even if they could hear him? Everything was wrecked, most importantly their minds and bodies. Willpower wasn't going to be enough to rejuvenate them. It could barely repair their machines.

"Copy, this is Dizzy. Ive got Reaper with me", she called in. Ross radioed back ,confirming that Karin survived along with him. Finally, Ross and Wasp both jostled with the radio, yelling at each other , perfectly fit to continue arguing.

He sighed. There was no relief though. Squad discipline would be essentially phantom thoughts now that everything around them had collapsed and not just figuratively. Already they were bickering, at least between Barry and Wasp. Soon enough everyone else would have something to complain about.

But that hum of electricity was what worried him most. It was a bad omen, a sign of something worse waiting for them. In all this time that he spent fighting these monsters , he had never wondered why they were here. What was their purpose. And why was this ship still active. There were too many questions. And not enough of stamina left to consider them.


	29. Chapter 29

His head felt light as a feather as he wrestled with the mech's emergency hatch release. He could feel his strength evaporating into the air as the cold began to chill his bones. The hardsuit had been leaking the heat exchange medium, a dark brown liquid that carried heat over his quickly cooling body. The heads up display in his helmet was flickering on and off ; it seemed the electronuclear battery had been damaged in the drop as well. All the while he continued to hear his team coughing and wheezing as they attempted to regain some semblance of control.

One last pull on the hatch release lever sapped most of the remaining stamina he had. The door popped open enough for him to push the heavy frame out. Outside he could see the remnants of the armory as flaming wreckage piled high. The crab-like cybernetic creatures were nowhere to be seen and more worrisome was the lack of presence of the strider mech that caused the mayhem.

He coughed as he tried to breath in deeply. A sign of fluid buildup in his lungs. Plugging his ears allowed him to hear the bubbling fluid with every breath he took. Breathing to become more difficult. Pneumonia. Of all the things to come down with, pneumonia was the worst. All the fighting and hunger had left his body too weak to fend off sickness. He imagined the others had caught the same infection and were suffering as he was.

He closed the hatch, seeing as there was little he could do outside. With his body rapidly cooling, staying inside the armored hull of the mech was the smartest thing today. He depressed the broadcast button on his comm panel , making sure to select the widest range of frequencies possible to make sure everyone could hear him.

"Here's the plan. We are running short on time. We're all getting too tired to fight anymore. The ship's reactors are still online and the quakes we are feeling are most likely being caused by the engine exhaust melting through the ice. We find a way to the bridge and pilot this infested ship off this planet" , he said while holding back his cough.

"Anyone see a landmark we can use to orient ourselves? Anything unique? My inertial guidance system is completely ruined" Ryuki radioed. He had scanned the area and saw only a few points of interest that could be used as guide posts. The one thing that caught his eye was a spire like object jutting out over the wreckage that had impaled a support beam , turning into a looming T.

"Can anyone see something that looks like a T" he radioed again. His radio clicked with a response from Ross. "Yeah, I see it. Looks like a beam got pierced through by this tall, skinny spike. Is that what you're seeing?" he replied.

"I see it too" replied Barry. Dizzy replied she had seen the same landmark. "Alright, who can get there?" he asked as he waited for the automated diagnostics to show him what was beyond repair.

"Im in a thinktank right now with Wasp" Dizzy radioed. "It still works, surprisingly. Banged up a bit but I think we can get to that T" she said. "Im in a mech along with Reaper. Dear god, this man is insane" Barry radioed in. "I can move too but it looks like I lost my shoulder mounted weapons".

Karin was the last to check in. "Our mech seems to be holding up fine. We're both doing ok considering what's happened. Sir, I suggest we get to our rations once we meet up. We might as well finish it off before we head to the bridge" she radioed.

The climb over the field of metal carcasses was long and precarious. Footing was temporary and nothing seemed to hold under the weight of the mechs. Shifting piles of wreckage slipped under their metal feet , keeping everyone intensely aware of the unstable ground beneath them. What would have been a thirty minute ascent took nearly two hours to complete. And above them, the gaping hole that the spider-tank had left still burned hot from its plasma beam. Globs of molten steel plopped down from the wound and with each drop came bursts of flame as fuel and munitions ignited from the intense heat.

Ryuki's mech had a claw-hook that was still operational, giving him a bit more support as he ascended. While his mech rested on its knees, its head looking straight down due to damage to the neck actuators, he lifted the claw up and used auxiliary sensors to aim it for the top of the heap. The forearm panels opened up to reveal four thrusters, one on each side of the rectangular arm. Another panel opened up at the elbow revealing the booster mounted at the joint. The clenched claw opened up its four claws once the boosters primed. He fired off the tethered arm to fifty meters above him. Plumes of white smoke and yellow flames pumped out from the arm, turning it into an impromptu fireworks spectacle

The claw smashed into an upright metal beam that had dug into the chest of a large artillery mech. He retracted the tether to see how strong the grasp was until he was content with its stability. The motor began to retract the tether slowly as Ryuki actuated the arms and legs to climb up the heap.

Wasp and Dizzy made their way up inside their mech, using a pair of torso mounted grappling hooks to make their way up. Fluid from the right leg actuators were trickling out like blood from a cut , slowly making the leg lose power as they ascended. They hurried their pace so that they would not be stuck on the side of the mountain of debris once the leg became useless.

Care needed to be taken not to burn out the winches as their remaining limbs had become damaged in the fall. Without the grappling hooks they would have no other way to get to the base of the T . The head was still able to look up and use its laser range finder, giving Dizzy a distance of thirty meters to what she assumed was the flat top at the peak of the pile.

Judicious use of the remaining booster fuel and firm manipulator grasps were enough to save the winches from tearing themselves apart. The climb, though, took longer than expected. For a peak no taller than the rolling hills back home, the ascent took ages. Any sudden movements would have meant that the footholds would break apart under the strain of supporting such a huge moment formed by the five meter long legs their mechs sported.

It took nearly thirty minutes to get to the peak. One would have thought some kind of celebration was in order after nearly falling down into a pit of razor sharp spikes but there was only a circle of dirty, worn mechs with splotches of battery fluids and slicks of fuel covering the deep slashes and scorch marks that covered their armor plates. In the middle of the circle, a weakly wavering fire burned on a pile of trashed containers. Shivering bodies sat near it, still in their hardsuits , waiting for their ready to eat meals to warm up while they freeze from the deep cold.

Ryuki stood at the foot of the fire with the palm of his hands facing towards the flames. Drips of working fluid dropped from the joints of his armor; it was only a matter of time before the armor would seize up completely if he didn't repair it. But he stood there, soaking up the heat, seemingly with nothing else on his mind. His bones shook from the shivering cold, his skin crawled with the freezing drops of sweat that ran down his sides. All he could think of was the fire, his eyes drawn to it , unblinking and concentrated on the plumes of smoke that rose from the fire.

No one seemed in the mood to talk. The food was in the form of liquid packages of nutrients flavored to taste like familiar foods. Their canny resemblance to real meals were just close enough to taste terrible yet filling, like a poorly made piece of fast food mystery meat.

"So this is all we've got left huh?" Barry muttered to himself. The protein slurries they consumed had to be piped into their suits lest the freezing atmosphere froze them solid if they opened their helmets up. It felt much like what a hospital patient would feel, consuming nourishment from out of a bag full of fluid.

All the solid food had long since been eaten or destroyed and the only items that survived were the powdered variety. Water was plentiful though, at least they wouldn't dehydrate to death. The cramped spaces inside the pilots deck were claustrophobic , making the ruined landscape a seemingly better alternative to sitting inside a tin can like preserved tuna.

The pneumonia became thicker, with each cough came yellow and green phlegm and the unmistakable gurgling crawling up through the bronchial tubes. Ryuki could feel the bubbles fermenting and the sickly popping that followed. Ross coughed incessantly while Ryuki tried to control himself. When he turned away from the others , Ryuki knew that Ross had begun to cough up blood.

There had to be medicine somewhere, anywhere. They sat atop a mountain of filled containers and trunks , there had to be one with supplies. " We need to find medicine" he said to his listless crew. For awhile, he said nothing else. He hoped an idea would pop up, but his body and soul were completely exhausted. Pushing himself would only sap away what stamina he had left.

"Anything with the caduceus on it would be medical related" Karin spoke up, one of the few not coughing up a storm. They sat there scanning around them, looking for anything that had a pair of coiled snakes. Of course it wouldn't be so easy. Nothing's been simple the entire time they had been on this frozen over planet.

"How do we normally find things that we need?" Reaper asked with a resounding cough. Thats right, Ryuki thought. There was always a way to find something. "They have to be tagged right?", Reaper asked.

Without the frequency of the radio tags, though, finding the containers would still be difficult. Scanning for one would take time and effort and it wasn't guaranteed that the right frequency would be picked up. The best that they could do was to find the closest signals and hope that they find what they're looking for. Time was running short along with their supplies . With sickness and hunger setting in, it would only be a matter of time that their will to survive would die out completely.

"Guys, Im coughing up blood man, what the hell" Wasp complained. It was getting worse and time was short. Ryuki walked as fast as he could, his belly hurting from the fluid collecting in his lungs. Breathing became laborious as each breath felt as if a heavy weight was compressing his chest. His lungs felt like they were burning and his pounded with an incessant headache.

He climbed up with genuine pain shooting up through his chest. Sitting didn't help much as his shallow breaths followed up with him. He pulled down a monitor and began tapping at the keys arrayed around the dual joysticks on the pilots seat. His fingers tapped at lightning speed, even with his mind and body tiring quickly from the incessant coughing.

He began scanning on the wide band, pumping all the power into the transceiver. The multiple antennae of the Lionheart were specific to command units , thus allowing him to scan multiple bands at once. His muscles ached as his body slumped on his seat. His heart palpitated hard enough to feel like it was trying to escape his body.

The scanner began to chirp steadily as multiple signals were found. "We need to triangulate these signals" he radioed to Karin. She began to trudge towards the other mechs, hoping her muscles would make the last few feet. Just as she approached her mech, the ground began to to shake.


	30. Chapter 30

Karin waved her hand from her seat to bring up the translucent holographic displays up. The hatch to the pilot's nest slowly closed and allowed the internal lights to increase the contrast on the displays till it was nearly opaque. She began tapping away at the keys that set at the head of the armrests while her eyes darted from screen to screen. Her tired eyes reflected back the soft glow with the low light aggravating her headache.

The auxiliary control system started up, allowing her eyes to control and illuminate vast amounts of information. Her incessant scanning proved useful as dozens of screens popped up and disappeared at a rapid rate until her gaze fixed on the transceiver system menu. She parsed through the enormous list of options until she found the sub-menu for the scanning antenna mode.

Here she set up the bandwidth and frequency ranges while at the same time instructing the nanite circuit links to repurpose themselves into information bridges to ferry the strength, direction and frequency data to the navigation computers. The patches took root , the nanite slivers branched and multiplied as they spread over the circuits.

Progress was made as she took the data Ryuki gave to her and began to scan for the pings that he had received. She radioed over to Ros to apply the same settings to the thinktank and set it up to discern which signal was associated to the supply boxes.

Now the only thing left was to wait and to hope that this would work. The wasteland before them was nearly insurmountable. Anything they may find might be buried so far down that it would take too much power to excavate them. Even then, what strength would they have left? Between the thoughts of failure and the coughing fits, the dead air seemed to press down on them like a coming storm. All they could hear was the dull ripping of the ice around them as the sub-light drives burned through the ice shelf.

Barry watched over Ross's shoulder, not so much to investigate what he was doing. He was looking plainly as a pretense to sitting inside the still warm crew cab of the think tank. Even with the hard suit on, the cold chill was still spreading its frozen daggers over his body.

Success was slow ,as each return ping needed to be processed against the database Ryuki had put together with his command mech. Slowly a map formed of the likely locations where the supplies would be. Would it be the rations and medicine they needed? It was hard to tell as they had no idea which was the right signal. At the least, Barry thought, they would have something rather than nothing.

Ryuki noticed that of the signals he received back, one stood out. It was strong from what he could tell, yet the same signal seemed to fluctuate for the others. Perhaps it was quite a distance away or buried under something reflecting its transmission. It didn't matter now. They had to take the risk and get to it, there was no time to go searching for the other containers.

Once the map was complete, Ryuki gave the order to go for the strong distant transmission. For them, something far away would be as little as 100 m in range. It was the terrain that made it so difficult. Their mechs were beaten and bruised and with no maintenance crews to fix them, they had to continue on limping. But these warmachines were designed to survive, that was the one thing Ryuki counted on. Even if the magazines run out, the plasmathrower fuel used up and the rockets spent, these giants would continue marching forward. Punching and kicking if they had to.

They set off from their perch for the climb down. It seemed that the container was at the base of the trash heap, making the journey not as difficult as they thought. Still, they would need to dig it out to gain access to its contents.

The think tank shot a set of grapple-anchors at the steel T at the summit. It began to rappel down in a very spider-like movement. Once it reached the base of the heap, it shot the other end of the anchors into the ground. With the cables fixed to the ground, it allowed Ryuki and Dizzy to use them as ziplines.

They grabbed hold of the nanofiber cables and descended rapidly. Their hands began to glow red as the friction burned through the blue anti-fouling paint used to keep the manipulator digits from rusting off. Sparks jumped out from their clenched fist as they raced down to the base.

A dust storm lifted up from where they landed. Bits and pieces of the heap came tumbling down from the shockwave of their impact. The thinktank though crawled down as a spider would, its legs stretching out and the clamps at the ends grabbing hold of the cliff side refuse.

As they settled at the bottom , the ship began to whine and groan. Something was giving way, steel bending under the force of the ship slowly tilting upward. Eventually it's nose would arch up through the ice shell. The base and the hangar above would be torn to shreds, the mechs and the labs alternatively sliced and crushed under the weight of the crashing ice.

The shards of ice would come crashing down on their abandoned base camp and swallow up the outpost they had evacuated. What the animals would do though was a different matter. They had seemed attracted to the heat of the ignited engines , perhaps looking for warmth that they had only met near the core of the planet. The giant ice-louse that walked the surface would have already noticed the tremors , slowly converging on this location. They probably thought there would be food, if they had the capacity to think. Ryuki didn't know for sure but after the last few days, it had become exceedingly clear that nothing was predictable.

The think-tank immediately began scanning using its ground-penetrating radar system. Although capable of detecting objects hidden under debris, the range was too short for an area wide scan. It crawled along with the others, wandering towards the expected location of the large cache while overcoming the quickly rusting wreckage that blocked their path.

Bits and pieces of the floor of above them continued to crash down. The crab-like creatures that attacked them were oddly absent in the debris. Perhaps they escaped but then where was the the strider? It was too big to have escaped. Maybe, Ryuki thought, it was destroyed in the fall. The striders were never built to take a fall, they were weapons platforms to be used as part of a vanguard of assault units. It wasn't built like the think-tanks or the tactical combat mechs , it wasn't built to scale buildings and maneuver through urban environments. There was no way to tell without searching intensely , something none of them had the leisure to do.

The thinktank synchronized with the mechs to match the radio triangulation to the radar image. Its computer array processed massive amounts of information in its attempt to match the sensor readings to any and all objects stored in its database. It scanned through the armored vehicle registry and cross-matched it to the partial data it collected of the wrecks. Mass, metal content , anything that would help it to identify the source of the signal.

The slow trudge across the broken landscape was silent apart from their footsteps. Each thud echoed into infinity, while the ground crunched under their collective weight. Ryuki scanned every wavelength around him in an attempt to spot suspicious movement but everything was dead. Nothing was moving. Their lights were only illuminating a small cone in front of them ,leaving the darkness to encroach on them. It nipped at them ,gnawed at it their heels. Shadows grasped at their bodies, their gripping cold penetrating through thick armor and piercing into their sickly bodies.

Wisps of cold circled around the mechanized legs. Droplets of frozen water freeze over to form a glassy sheen along the cracks and gashes on the armor. Exposed tubes and heat pipes drip with perspiration. As they walked , their machines shuddered . Bits fall off, a concerning development. It was hoped that none of the miscellaneous parts that were being shed were important.

The ground radar was began to ping rapidly as they walked over the remains of an armored personnel carrier. A large object was detected, matching the location of the radio signal. A holographic representation of the object appeared in front of Karin . It was a large shipping crate much like the ones that a cargo ship would carrier. The radar was fine enough to see the ridges along the sides of the container and picked up the faint outlines of the locking bolts on the door.

She relayed to the others that this was it. This is the supply container. She hoped but she didn't say outright. It was in her voice though, that subtle tremor that one has when the fear of the truth overtakes the triumph over adversity. There had to be medicine and food in there, she thought. Anything less would doom them to a slow and painful death as their bodies succumb to the fluid building in their lungs.

They began to dig, with open claws and palms. They tossed chunks and plates aside as quickly as possible. Dust rose up from their work along with the remnants of the ships internal structure. Pieces crumbled in their hands ,brittled by frost.

The door to the container stuck out from underneath a warped bulkhead plate. Just the corner peaked out from under all the wreckage but just enough to make a positive ID. They doubled their effort in their dig even with their machines straining under the effort. It seemed as if the mechs were whining in pain as their joints began to grind against their bearings.

It was bigger than they expected. The container was more like the size of a small transport ship. Something like a stealth drop ship with enough space for a lot of equipment and troops. Two heavy bars locked the door in place with a set of large crossbars jamming them shut.

Ryuki grabbed one of the bars and began to bend it out of shape . The tip of the bar slipped out from the metal eye that held it in place once it broke in half. Ryuki did the same to the other bar while Barry went to work on the joining crossbars.

The door still didn't open though. Ryuki zoomed in on the edges and spotted the weld marks. Someone had really wanted to keep this container sealed shut. He wondered if whatever was in there was supposed to stay sealed inside.

Before he could react, Karin began to unweld the door with the utility torch of her thinktank. The welding arm extended from out of the thorax, from under a retracting panel . The thin arm was jointed at three places and sat atop a rotating turret that lifted up from the compartment.

Slowly it worked its way through the welds while Ryuki wondered if this was a mistake. Whatever they would find could very well change their odds of survival whether for good or ill. In the end though, their time was running shorts and risks were needed to be taken if any of them were to see home again.


	31. Chapter 31

The thick welds slowly melted away as they torched passed over the joints. Fluid dripped and pooled into a metal puddle at the base of the door. Once all the welds melted away they began to pull on the doors. It took a few tries as the cold had frozen the hinges shut but with the two mechs using metal bars pried them open.

Inside they found not just supplies but a veritable assault battalion of black-ops mechs. Painted in black and grey urban camouflage, they were difficult to see except for the low light reflection of the visor sensor barriers. In the darkness it seemed as if their eyes were glowing red almost like diabolical entities waiting for their arrival ,in the shadows.

"What the hell is this?" Barry said, the first words anyone had said four hours. No one reponded, not a single word was mustered. While the mechs they found were unusual in their advanced capabilities, especially the command unit Ryuki piloted, these units were beyond anything they had seen.

The unmistakable angular contours of stealth plating and a dark aura, that scrambled their outlines, surrounding them were far beyond any special operations units they had encountered before. The electro-optical camouflage was disconcerting and a low hum emanated from the field that was unsettling. While they did operations that required customized mechs, none of them had ever been as sharp and menacing as these.

The first order of business though was the medical supplies. What they found in the cases and crates inside the container was an entire regimen of supplies, enough food ,clothing and medicine for a month. The entire container was filled to the brim with gear, from spelunking harnesses to glide suits. The stealth mechs, the supplies ,the gear. This was a dead drop container, something that would have been air-dropped by a Wave Rider rapid deployment dropship.

The machines were superb in their construction. Where actuators would be exposed in most other mechs, these had armored cowls to protect them . The joints were composed of an extremely strong plastic polymer, probably made of a nanoweave of titanium and nanotubes. It almost looked as if the arms belonged to a bodybuilder ,as the myomer musculature was sharply defined. And even that was heavily armored with plating that would normally be reserved for torso armor.

They assumed the mechs had to be super heavy but the frames looked to be designed for agility. The range of motion they could handle was implied to be incredibly wide from how the armor panels seemed to retract away from joints and looking as if they were actually free floating . Something like that was unexpected for what would be incredibly expensive and complicated to mount on a combat mech.

There was one suit , of the four inside , that seemed to be missing its torso and head with incomplete arms and legs. When Ryuki turned his flood-lights onto it , he saw a lion regalia much like the one that adorned his own mech. In a flash of realization , it became clear that it wasn't a mech but more like conformal modules that fitted his Lionheart command unit.

"Its our lucky day, eh?" Reaper spoke. It didn't seem that anyone was glad though. This was definitely odd , though just as strange as the ship they were stuck inside. With shadowy monsters lurking in every conceivable blindspot, a platoon of futuristic black-ops mechs was the topper on a pile of strangeness.

"Alright. Find the meds and antibiotics. Make sure to take some diuretics to drain out your lungs if you're having trouble breathing" Ryuki radioed to the team. Black boxes containing a faint red plus sign contained medications for every conceivable situation. Anticoagulants, beta-blockers , anesthetics,even big jars of gummy multivitamins.

Along with those were the crates filled with gourmet ready-to-eat meals. They were in big brown plastic containers but inside were vacuum sealed bags of pre-cooked food like grilled chicken. The most prized meals were the BBQ ribs that came as a half-rack with dehydrated cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. Even just looking at them made the hunger pangs seem to disappear. It steadily became difficult to concentrate on anything other than those tempting feasts that lay only meters away while they worked to heal themselves up and activate the mechs.

For morale, Ryuki stopped all work to make sure everyone was able to get a warm meal. They pulled out a crate of survival gear and pitched a large shelter up. A fire-stove in the middle warmed the room up to a comfortable temperature while the hot plates warmed up some of the larger meals. Many of the rations they found were in ready to make pouches that only needed the addition of some water.

It had been a long time since a proper meal was made. Between the scraps of food and the liquid meals, their stomachs had become unaccustomed to real food. At first it seemed too much for some, with their faces contorting to keep the food down. But those who did feel nauseous forced themselves to continue eating. Their strength was gone and the food was one of the few ways to replenish their stamina. So they ate , enjoying every bit of real food even if their stomachs cramped from exhaustion.

Ryuki stood at the far end of the container with a flashlight in hand while drinking down one of the liquid meals he had left. He shone the light into every corner ,every crack and crevice trying to figure out who would have brought this along.

The set up was clever , he admitted. Without the base unit, the modules would be useless. They wouldn't connect correctly without heavy modifications since they were specifically designed to only fight the Lionheart. So why was the Lionheart sitting unprotected in the armory while this was hidden away? Something about it had to be incredibly important then.

The Lionheart was a unique mech but it wasn't particularly astonishing about it. But perhaps with these parts it would be something more? Or it could all be a gambit by someone long since dead to get a fool to equip it and set off a massive explosion that kills everyone.

Once the team was sated , Ryuki approached them with a stern face and a firm gait. "Take your mechs as far as you can. This container may be a trap and I don't want any of you here if it sets off" he said, leaving everyone dumbfounded.

"Sir, with all due respect , what the hell is going on with you?" Barry interjected. Everyone else murmured , some nodding slightly in pensive agreement. "We already opened the thing, nothing happened. If it was a trap we should have already been dead" he continued.

Ryuki realized that they thought he was delusional, speaking of traps when the entire time the only thing that was a danger to them were the biomechanical monstrosities that continued to chase them.

"Alright, I may sound a bit paranoid but listen to me. The mech I found, the Lionheart, it was out in the armory unguarded. Those pieces of armor in the back of the container, they hook up into my mech. So why leave the Lionheart out and the upgrade parts in a sealed container? Why was it sealed if its got a beacon on it? Thats why I think its a trap. So take all the supplies you can and go as far as possible. I will check each mech myself to see if any of them are trapped. Just remember the original plan is to get to the secondary bridge to regain control of the ship. If you find any shuttles, take em and leave" , he said.

"We're not leaving you behind,sir" Ross replied back. "Don't worry , if Im not dead than I'll probably joining you guys for some iced teas when we get outta here" , Ryuki said. There were some murmurs but everyone agreed this would be the best path forward.

The thinktank was rigged up with a tow cable and a skid made of lose planks of wood and steel to carry the supply crates away. The others rearmed with the munitions found inside the container, replacing empty guns with fresh armaments.

Leaving behind the captain as they marched away, there was an eerie sense of calm as they watched from their seats as Ryuki stood atop the ruins. The low light had turned him to a shadow, as if he was a specter.

"This is insane" Dizzy said to herself. Everything about this was delusional, she thought. Though thankful for the a hot meal in such a long time, she was strangely annoyed at the discovery of the cover ops unit stashed away in an unmarked container. It was as if the normalcy of being stranded on a deserted planet with only murderous ,thoughtless monsters in her presence had been shattered by the discovery of weaponry far beyond any she had seen before.

And in that moment she realized that she had been through so much that her mind was slowly forgetting what normal actually was. Just a few days on this forsaken ice ball was enough to cast a pall over her memories and take over her thoughts and motivations. No longer did she want to go to Arnolds for a hot pastrami and egg sandwich. No, now it was replaced with dreams of solid chunks of tuna in tin cans.

Maybe all of this was just a horrible nightmare ,she thought. It had to be. People only joked about finding aliens. Everyone always said it, that the boring missions were always bug hunts because they were just that, hunting for things that probably don't exist. When colonists talked about a missing tractor, they called down some marines to check it out and the result was always the same. Nothing other than bad luck was the culprit.

She tried to reassure herself that she was in a fever dream somehow. When she coughed up blood though, when the warmth of her body escaped into a cloud of water vapor, she understood that this wasn't a dream. That maybe those colonists did see ET's, that maybe the bug hunts had a purpose.

Ryuki waited until he lost line of sight with his team. He activated the first four mechs and walked them outside to gain access to the armor at the back. Nothing out of the ordinary happened , no traps were sprung , not even a warning message from the anti-theft system.

He climbed back into his Lionheart and approached the mech.

While the other machines behaved as expected, this unit seemed to be reacting strangely to his mech. At first he thought he saw some sort of hazy glow tracing the panels of the armor. Then as he got closer, the clamps that held it together unlocked as if preparing itself for his arrival.

The Lionheart too began to do things on its own. Ports opened up over the arms and legs and studs extended out from the chest. The weaponry attached to its back and shoulders were purged along with any remaining gas tanks and magazines.

The holographic display changed from the purple and gold to a stark white all of a sudden. A symbol popped up on his screen when he lost control of his mech. It was a swooping eagle , with missiles carried in its talons and a fire blazing from its wings. Its beah was angular and wide open flames shooting out of it. Encircling it was a ring of deep red with a star burning from the background. No, not a star. It was the Sun. A Sol Republic mech?

The control sticks dropped away and replaced with a set of control panels attached to two sticks planted into a set of linear tracks. Holographic buttons were arranged around the grips and a second series of buttons popped out from the hand guards. The seat flattened out and a large bright screen dominated his view.


	32. Chapter 32

Some sort of autopilot had activated ,leading his mech into the awaiting exoskeletal frame. It turned smoothly and stepped back into the conformal modules. The bright white screen flickered and then several command lines scrolled down. A moment later the hologram turned dark and then returned to display the emblem he had saw on the side.

Several more holograms appeared and then the walls of the pilot's deck seemed to stretch then disappear. In its place was a full 360 degree panorama of the surroundings. He looked down to see himself floating with just the seat and the controls with him. He mustered a few choice words under his cough before a series of new holograms replaced the previous ones.

These were system status windows , displaying the reactor state and the weapons ammunition counters. Several other holographic windows displayed radar data and multispectral vision. One of them was more intriguing though. A window displaying details of the various armaments floated off in the corner of his vision , with one item blinking periodically.

He tried to read its name but all he saw was its designation - HBM-01. What it meant was something he couldn't figure out. He had not once seen a weapon with that name , not even something similar. The last letter in the designation had to stand for missile though, it didn't seem reasonable for it to be anything else.

He noticed that the ammunition count for that weapon was at three, odd for a missile weapon as they usually came in fours or sixes, usually as part of a missile pod or rack. What good would three missiles be? There wasn't a users manual to refer to anyway so it was just a futile guessing game till he actually activated it.

The power up cycle finally completed when he regained control of the mech. The forward view showed a floating bracketed box , probably for the guided weapons systems. It seemed the mech's only active targeting missile was the BSRM-01. Everything else was semi-active, requiring him to keep the targeting bracket on the target he wanted to kill.

He pressed down on the foot paddle and twisted the right stick. Unexpectedly ,the mech burst into a sideways dash out of the container. A meter began to decrease as the boosters fired, obviously the amount of propellent in the mech. Oddly though there was a second bar below the diminishing white bar. This one was a navy blue and seemed to pulse. He didn't know what it would do and paid no heed to it.

On each arm was an autocannon with an underslung plasmathrower. On the back was a set of two autonomous arm mounts with a set of Gatling guns mounted to it, feed by a pair of ammo belts from two tanks mounted to the waist. On the torso was a set of heavy machine guns with smoke and chaff launchers arranged on the lower torso sections of the stealth armor. The arms in the Leonheart had fit into the autocannon loaded arms like sleeves, the same with the leg armors. It was odd that he was sitting inside a machine that was piloting another machine. How ridiculous did it look from the outside?

He allowed the mech to idle as he attempted to call up his team to tell them that they could come back. As he spoke with them about the status of the other mechs, he saw a small symbol pop up in the central console, a yellow exclamation point slowly fading in and out. He thought nothing of it as it wasn't a system alert since those were much more obvious and persistent. He would get to it when he had the time to. For now he needed his team to prepare for the assault on the secondary bridge.

While they marched back , he took the chance to open the alert message. He wasn't sure what to expect but what he say was definitely nowhere near what he could have imagined.

A video began to play , some kind of personal log it seemed. A figure cloaked in shadows began to fumble with the camera before he set it down. He adjusted the lighting with a flexible lamp , its bulb weakly glowing leaving most details hard to make out.

The figure in the video coughed as he prepared to begin. He opened up a bottle and scarfed down something that seemed to ease whatever intense pain he seemed to be dealing with. He tossed the little bottle behind him as he slouched in front of the camera.

"If you're seeing this,that means you are most likely one the few remaining untainted soldiers left in the Sol Republic" ? That didnt make any sense to Ryuki. What exactly was tainting them and why were there so few left that hadn't been 'tainted'? There was no way to find answers as the video had locked all the control panels. There was no way to search any logs or databases, it just would not let him do anything. "We failed. What you have before you is the last remaining gear we could plunder. The ship you found that in was our last refuge. The fight's over for us and probably for you too. I suggest you run as far away as possible", the man continued.

"They've infiltrated every echelon of the Imperial Navy , even the joint chiefs of staff are doppelgangers. Do not trust anyone. Do not believe what they tell you. Don't listen to their proclamations that we were terrorists , that we were the ones killing people. They did it, they framed us. So that they could harvest us. But we lost. We couldn't predict how well they would blend in. They copied everything that made a human. Everything except innate empathy. And now, these psychopathic parasites have control.

"Make sure you blow up the ship when you leave. It's equipped with an experimental warp drive. They said it could take us to before the shadow invasion started. We only listened to them out of desperation. Im sorry , Im sorry we couldn't do it. Im so sorry".

"This is the final log of Colonel Ryuki Morimoto". Ryuki's eyes bulged at the sound of his name. His mind flooded with conflicting thoughts but the single phrase that continued to bubble through the chaos was 'what?'. What was that? Sitting inside his mech, preparing to siege the secondary bridge and what he sees is himself. An older self, a Colonel. It was a lie, it had to be. The voice huffed softly as the medicine seemed to wear off. The video shook , dust fell past the recording lense and the light swung over the mans face.

It was him. Or rather, it was himself. Through the scars and the eyepatch, he could see the lines of his own face. Though his hair had turned grey and the face wrinkled and pale, it was him. It was who he would be in some future alternative history. He wished he could pick up the radio and call this man, ask him what it all meant. A one way message that seemed to be for someone who knew what was going on. Too vague to discern anything important but filled with ominous portents. "What do I do now?" he questioned himself. This wasn't about being stranded inside an old,frozen ship filled with parasitic aliens. This was a fight that had been going on for longer than they had realized. A war fought in another time and place that somehow bleed into his world.

The drive the message spoke of, could that be what was being powered by these reactors? He couldn't answer anything. His years of command had not prepared him for this. Fighting these aliens was merely an extension of guerrilla warfare, he thought. These things, they were conquerors. The voice told him so. Those trembling lips, the sullen eyes and the crackling words, these things had won an absolute victory. And now they were here , preparing for conquest again. This was beyond a bug hunt. This is the ground zero of humanity's eventual subjugation.

But this time it was different. This time, maybe, they could make a difference? Ryuki couldn't stop thinking about it. He couldn't understand how it could come to this. What physics he knew couldn't explain what he was sitting inside. They needed to get out, they needed to get back to central command and tell them everything, bring every recording , every piece of evidence.

His team peaked over the ridge, moving in their slow mechs back towards the container. They spotted the captain standing with his back towards them, his head tilted up , seemingly locking eyes with the Lionheart. They came to a slow halt and disembarked. It was surprising to see that Ryuki's mech was enveloped inside another machine, but what was more concerning was that Ryuki hadn't said a single word since they had came back. Something had happened and with the black-ops mechs standing in a neat line, it was definitely not about random explosions.

"The base ,it evacuated" he broke the silence with those words. "They didn't evacuate. The HQ was infiltrated. Everyone there was in some parasitic thrall. They left when we came because they didn't expect us. They left because they knew we would ruin their plans", he spoke in monotone.

"Sir, I would like permission to ask what the frak?" Barry said, not waiting for permission to be granted. It was a stunning accusation , everyone knew that. But the seriousness on the captain's face meant that it was as true as ice was cold.

"I discovered a message, ah , to myself. Well a message from some future self. This ship seemed to have overcharged its Warp drive and pushed itself into an entirely different universe. How thats possible ,I don't know. Frankly, it should have blown to bits the moment it crossed the M-space boundary. That doesnt matter. What really should concern us is that these parasitic aliens successfully infiltrated the Sol Republic and have been carrying out a program of controlled population harvesting. They've been ,essentially, consuming people. For what, I don't know. I don't care. My only goal now is to make sure we get the word out to the Terran Central Command that infiltrators have already began disseminating" , he spoke.

He waited a moment to see their response. On a normal day, the amount of disbelief would have been measured by the strength of the electrical discharge that caused massive brow furrowing. Today, nothing. Stone cold faces. They had been through so much that nothing really surprises them anymore.

"And now our goal is to keep this ship from launching" he said after the long pause. There they were, the emotions of fear and anger that had so far been sapped by this ship. "You can't be serious! We need to get the frak off this iceburg!" Barry yelled. The others had similar sentiments.

"I've put up with enough , I've lost everything I held dear to me and now you're saying that I have to give up my life!?" Ross growled. The breaking point had been reached if Ross was losing control of his anger. There was only one option to give them hope of returning home. "I intend to destroy the ship once you have escaped" he said. "Once we get control of the bridge, I expect the team to bug out in an escape ship. Considering this ship is pretty much the same as the ones the Republic use, that means the secondary bridge is going to have an adjoined ship capable of going into warp. So that'll be when we part ways" Ryuki finished. The only reply was the subtle shifting of the ice floes rubbing against the hull of the ship.

"This will probably be the last chance to get some food and rest. Unpack the tents, get the food cooking. Get some sleep everyone".


	33. Chapter 33

No one spoke a word. The levity of the situation had crushed any sense of a grip on the situation. For all the time they spent fighting and surviving, the never considered what it would take to actually escape. No one thought of what sacrifice would be needed to accomplish that goal. But once Ryuki made it clear what he intended, they all realized that death was holding their hands as they approached the end of their ordeal. Leading them on to the other side, whether it be on the shores of Earth or in the inky darkness of oblivion.

The food seemed to have lost all its flavor. The fire didn't seem to warm their bodies. Sleep didn't come easily and what little sleep to be had proved unsatisfying. The only dreams were nightmares. Morning was just a trio of dying lamps.

Ryuki slept well that night. Somehow, knowing the path forward assuaged the tension in his mind. He finally had a real goal , a real mission in all the coldness that enveloped. The unknown ,the shadows that grabbed at him, seemed to shrink away from him. The air seemed to clear up as the fog over his mind dissipated.

Ross left the group to speak with Ryuki alone. He was unsure of what to say. Perhaps an apology first, he thought. He didn't want stay silent while the veritable end approached. He wanted to make amends for his outburst.

Ryuki lay in his folding cot, sleeping soundly for once. Ross wasn't sure if it would be polite to wake him up just to speak with him. He stood at the entrance for longer than he realized while he contemplated what to do and to say. Ryuki turned in his cot, yawning as he broke his sleep.

Ross walked in, silently cursing himself for barging in so quickly. "Sir, permission to speak?" he nodded his head as he was still shaking off the last wisps of sleepiness. "Sir, why are you doing this?" Ross asked.

It sounded like a simple question and could have been answered with a concise and courageous response. It wasn't that easy. There were real reasons why he decided to stay behind. "Im the captain of this crew and its my job to ensure your survival. If you consider what it takes to take down this ship then you know that it won't be easy and will take a long time to do it. The only way to be sure this thing never gets off the ground is to self-destruct the reactors. Im not a pilot or a ship captain so I won't know how to do it through the bridge controls" he said.

"Sir , at least let one of us help you program the ignition, I mean someone can help you so you can get out of here with us?" Ross asked.

"How long would it take to do that? No one here has experience with ships like this. We're soldiers. Even Karin probably wouldn't know what to do. These systems are not anywhere near similar to anything we've fiddled with. Our mechs were designed so tinheads like us can use them. The only thing any of us really know is the manual self destruct. If this ship is what I think it is, then it means its located at the foot of the main console, like in all the other ships we hitched on".

"But sir, you can set the timer to give you enough time to escape" Ross said with with his hands beckoning to Ryuki to consider what he was saying. "Any time I give it is time enough for those things to wreck any escape plan. There is no way we can know if they can't just abort the self-destruct. They're parasites, what if they have control of something that lets them do that? You know what, we already saw that. Those burned bodies we saw when we found those polyps, those were people. They were already using them", Ryuki told Ross as he stood up from the cot.

"Sir, we can't just leave you here" Ross implored.

"You are not leaving me here. You are being ordered to evacuate when the chance arises. I brought us here, on my orders. I will make sure that you get off this ice rock. And I expect you to fulfil your mission when you escape" Ross continued.

In his mind, he was astonished by his new found volition. Every word he said felt so true. It had been so long since he felt such confidence coursing through him. No more fear. It was at that moment that he realized what the darkness was. It was absence. It was the absence of his responsibility filling him with visions of ruthless shadows.

"Ross, we are professional soldiers. A bunch of fleshy mooks aren't going to stop us. If I'm lucky, I might even bring back a souvenir" Ryuki said as Ross walked out of the tent.

What passed for morning came the same way as it left. It was only slightly less dim than before , though thanks to the lamps it was hard to tell when exactly morning came. The new mechs were worked over by the team to make sure they were fully ready for combat. Most took this time to make adjustments. Some adjusted the height of the seat, others increased the brightness on the holographic displays.

Karin scrutinized the loadout of the mechs. All but Ryuki's mech had a standardized configuration. They all carried heavy autocarbines chambered for 60 millimeter high explosive anti tank rounds , with an ammunition feeder that could swap into cluster shells. On their left arms were combat shields with retractable bayonets ,designed to be thrust down to sever arms and legs like a guillotine. On their shoulders were Dagger semi-guided rockets inside retractable racks with a loader that an extra two loads of rockets. On their backs were two sets of weapons, one was a pulse plasma cannon and on the other an autonomous three barrel chain gun. Their heads were similarly mass produced with a single large sensor eye surrounded by a set of six smaller sensors , three to each side. The sensors sat on a gimballed ball allowing the head anunprecedented field of view.

Ryuki's mech was a combination of two machines. The Lionheart, with its small grey and white mane seemed to be some sort of leader mech, with multiple antennae that would indicate a battalion commander would have used it. But it seemed like some kind of parade showpiece instead of a war machine. What was the point? Karin thought maybe it was to make its presence on the battlefield known. But that kind of attention would surely make this a perpetual target. She pushed that thought aside when she saw the backpack unit.

Unlike most mechs, there was just the shingle weapon rack alongside an oversized thruster nozzles attach to a fin structure that ran down the center of its back. The rack though seemed to be of a singular purpose. A container sat on the hardpoint of the rack. Its size and shape meant something large was stored in it but the lack of access meant whatever was inside would take much too long to deploy in a combat.

She spotted something on the container , a symbol facing towards the mechs' back. She looked closer , using the creases and edges of the mech's massive legs as a ladder. She focused her eyesight on a yellow label, some kind of warning sticker. Then she saw it. The three orbiting hexagonal shapes around a single star-shaped dot. The symbol for an object containing fussible matter. A nuclear weapon.

She scrambled up into the pilot's deck and began to call up all the displays , searching for a schematic of the weapon bays. The menu structure wasn't easy to figure out. The future decades this ship lived in had brought with it the systems of a much more advanced user interface. Wrangling through the menus though would have been a good exercise in user experience had she entered into software engineering instead of spec-ops.

Trudging through the myriad menus,she found the weapon loadout for the Lionheart. At first it only showed what the original mech carried and none of the add-on parts. She happened upon the conformal parts menu ,showcasing all the abilities and weapons associated with them.

It was here that she found what the BSRM-1 weapon was. It was a two part weapon system, a rocket motor and a compound warhead containing four bombs. Each bomb ,she saw, was rated as ten kiloton nuclear warheads. With three of the warheads, the mech had the capability of absolutely leveling several cities within a fifty kilometer radius.

She jumped out of the mech and searched for Ryuki. He was was standing outside his tent, adjusting his hardsuit visor shield. She spoke like a machine gun sputtered bullets. "Slow down! What is it?" Ryuki said.

"Your machine, Sir, is equipped with a set of nuclear ballistic missiles, three of them. Theres enough in there to turn this ship into radioactive sludge. Such a weapon mounted to a mech would have been for a singular purpose. To eradicate an entire population. When he saw himself refute that word, he thought that Colonel Morimoto was telling the truth. But with this, what would he have done to accomplish his mission? But her, in the pits of a frozen over hellscape, there wasn't any leeway to consider the morality of his future self.

So he didn't deactivate the weapon there. As long as the warheads were unarmed, there wouldn't be any danger. He wondered if he would make the choice, whether to launch them. Wistfully, he wondered if he had the willpower anymore to make that decision.

The final preparations were made. Using the ship schematics scrounged from wreckages and the think-tanks sensor drones and radar dome, the estimated their location. They needed to march towards a freight elevator about 200 meters away and then go down it to the command and control there was the CIC ,the combat information center , which would have access to the auxiliary bridge. From the ship layout, there would be a funicular up to a small frigate sized transport ship. It had just enough room in its cargo hold for all of their mechs.

To exit out of the ruined cargo hold, they needed to traverse the wasteland and bust down a reinforced door that led into a large hallway, designed to ferry cargo from one hold to another. That wouldn't be much of a problem as the spec-ops mechs had tool-arms that contained plasma cutters.

Getting there though would have been a hassle if it weren't for the boosters mounted on all their mechs. While missing the rocket grapples , the boosters were enough to get across the rough terrain. Karin had earlier told Ryuki that his mech had a flight log and showed that whoever was piloting it had racked up close to 200 hours of flight time. For a bulky, nuclear armed mech, it seemed to be suited for long flights.

The Ravenclaw, as the Lionheart's conformal packs were registered under, carried a triple tandem nuclear micro-reactor. Three generators produce nearly twenty thousand kilo newtons of thrust, unheard of for a mech of its size. This warmachine was designed to be fast and hit hard, an assault raider. He realized then that the reason it carried its armaments was that it would be perfect for disrupting enemy ranks. Something that could hide so easily in forests, travel so fast through the air and launch such devastating attacks would be the bane of any and all militaries. Including those that were in the thralls of the alien parasites that had retreated from Glacius.

They flew through the air, jumping from one spot to the next. Thankfully the computerized navigation also had an autopilot capability, allowing the mechs to make full use of their jump jets without the necessary skills to manual pilot them. But the noise produced from their ignition surely brought unwanted attention on them. Whatever was chasing them was still out there, hiding in the shadows and the vents, searching for them and waiting for the right moment to spring their attack.


	34. Chapter 34

They made it to the double wide hallway entrance, its doors tightly sealed shut. Karin and Barry began cutting through with their plasma torches, a process that could take hours considering how thick the door was. This meant that the others had to set up a defensive perimeter. And hope no monsters showed up. The matter of the spider strider that had seemingly disappeared was still worrying them. Staying stationary was most definitely not helping with that.

Ryuki considered what he would do if it returned. He glanced over to the ammunition counter for the ballistic missile launcher. A single missile could wipe out almost everything inside the ship and he wasn't sure if that included them. While the mechs had full nuclear overpressure systems, there wasn't any assurances that the thermal energy from the nuclear weapon would not melt right through the reactor housings on their mechs. While they may be protected from exterior radiation, the molten salt heat exchangers could burst and spill superheated fluid onto the inner structure of their mechs. All he really wanted was a single useful warhead. At ten megatons, would not have been enough to heavily damage them.

He looked up the blast radius for the missile. "What was I expecting" he said once he saw that each warhead had a radius of 10 kilometers. The concussive wave from weapons that powerful would wreck the ship , perhaps even making the hull collapse like a wave of steel. There had to be a way to deactivate all but one warhead . Still, even with only one warhead igniting, the threat of overloading their own overpressure systems was still present. The risk of not using it though was more difficult to surmise. If the spider strider reappeared , along with its ever present swarm, what could they do other than use the nuclear missile? The plasma throwers had limited ammo, not enough to even stop the first wave of those crab-bots. It would be a slaughter.

There was no other way. Just not a single way. It had to be done. That warhead must be armed. The imminent threat was overwhelming. It was a matter of time before the horde returned. Spending that time waiting for that door to fall was just ticking down the doomsday clock.

He wasn't afraid of death anymore. That feeling had long since died after the unceasing fighting. A part of him even relished the idea of dying. It would be a fitting ending to a horrible adventure. But once again his responsibility to his soldiers kept those disturbing thoughts at bay. That fleeting moment ,those glances at the self destruct , they were just remnants of a state that almost overwhelmed him. Introspection showed how wasteful it would have been, to just let everyone else die because he wanted some peace. And though the shadows encroached on his mind , filling in the cracks that no sleep and poor nutrition had left, he would not let it envelop him. No, that was the true fear. That something that he knew nothing had the power to influence his actions when it was only its mere presence that was infecting him with doubt. He searched through the controls till he found the arming protocol for the warheads. He activated a armed a single warhead.

The question then was whether he would tell the others. Such a devastating weapon obviously was not meant to be unleashed in the confines of a ship. But this was a big ship, incredibly big. Each cargo hold was nearly 500 meters long and 50 meters all Perhaps,he thought, if the explosion happened away from them, in another compartment with the thick superstructure to block the waves of overbearing pressure and radiation , the effects would be much less destructive. That still didn't guarantee that the squad would agree to it. Should they even be allowed to make the choice for him?

Ryuki wasn't sure. If his team was hesitant with unarmed warheads than an armed one would be much worse. But he needed whatever advantages he could get against the onslaught of a superior enemy. So , he wondered, would it be a good idea to tell them?

Normally, having his team situationally aware would be the best route. Having everyone on the same page would make maneuvers much easier. But he knew that they would argue ,that the unit cohesion that was left would evaporate. They wanted out, they needed to escape. Fighting was no longer an option, it was just a quicker way to end up dead.

But he would destroy whatever trust they had in him if he did that. There had to be a way to make them understand.

He waited for an idea to appear before him. His headache was making any kind of deep thought nearly impossible. He had hoped that the quantum foam would spontaneously present to him the most bold plan he could think of.

The ground began to tremble again. The ship listed backwards just enough to cause the towering heap pile that had been their base to topple apart. Peaking out from the wreckage was the electromagnetic containment array of the plasma cannon mounted to the strider. And to his dismay, sparks of electricity rose up from those drums of super charged ions.

"Keep burning through that door. I've got a plan. If I tell you to take cover, make sure you do!" he yelled over the radio. There wasn't enough time for them to question him nor to stop him. He had already lifted off into the air, his mech obscured by the contrails pouring out from the various thrust nozzles. With a burst of energy , he propelled himself towards the slowly rising giant spider, leaving behind concentric circles of compressed pressure waves.

He began firing off a pair of Dagger rockets at a time to gain the beasts attention. The rockets exploded into fireworks as their terminal fuses ignited. The rain of flaming shrapnel smashed against the striders armor and ,for a brief moment, ignited the mottled fleshy overgrowth that crept across its body.

The plasma cannon turret swept up slowly with its beam at full power . The plasma raked the walls as it rotated in an attempt to hit the Lionheart EX , leaving behind a long running gaping wound of red hot molten metal. Ryuki activated the ventral thrusters to perform a quick dodge to the right of the colossus as its beam went over him.

He began to rake the strider with his autocannons. The shells exploded on impact with powerful HDX explosive shape charged warheads. Small sized pressure waves bounced off the hull of the mech taking along with it bits and pieces of the flesh armor. A few more rockets slammed into the head, its control center.

He hadn't noticed that as the strider lifted itself up from the ground, a swarm of crab-bots streamed out from under it. Some began to climb the beasts' legs while others marched towards his team. As he continued to fire at the giant, he spotted a few of them on its body and realized quickly what was happening.

He yelled into his radio , warning the others of the incoming waves. Even if they were ready to defend, they wouldn't last long. Ryuki had to draw them off into a concentrated kill zone and wipe everything out in one strike. He disengaged from his fight with the spider and rocketed towards the swarm.

The plasmathrowers had enough pressure to shoot out a flame nearly 45 meters long , with enough fuel to run for nearly 5 minutes continuously. Perhaps that would be enough , but that would still let the buggers slip through if he didn't catch them all in his swooping attack. So instead of attacking them head on, he decided to manipulate their path.

Much like the firewalls that prevent fires from spreading through drought ridden forests, the plasma fire would halt the rapid advance of the crabs by forcing them to change direction lest they fry in the flames.

Ryki fired on the ground to create a firestorm to push the crabs back. As he built the flaming walls, the four legged machines took notice of him. The threat was no obvious to their piddling rudimentary brains and this caused them to change their target to him. The spider strider too saw this and like a hive queen began to direct its minions towards him along with its plasma beam. The air burst into tiny sparklers as the beam past overhead , close enough to hear the crackling of the oxygen burning up under the intense heat of the plasma.

He herded the bugs towards their queen with the fire lanes but a few did get breach the front line. His team was on alert waiting for the stragglers to show up , leaving only Barry to continue to cut through the door. They waited for the first to crawl over the horizon , a long wait it seemed before any showed up.

The first group popped over the wreckage of a ruined mech , their mandibles snapping at the air. Karin fired off swarm of Dagger rockets at the group before opening up with the shoulder mounted chain gun. The rockets splashed on the crab bugs before the chain gun rounds exploded on them, riddling the first group of enemies with enough holes to use them as water filters.

Then came the main assault. Nearly 50 appeared above them , scampering around on the walls and over the wrecks. Karin began firing off with her autocarbine while she bombarded one side of the engagement with rockets. She released the AI constraints on the chain gun and allowed it to fire on targets of its choosing. The bugs began jumping at them while a few began to fire off whatever weapons that weren't subsumed by flesh. She swung her left arm over her torso and deployed a shield from out of the arm.

Ross was engulfed in flames as his plasmathrower had been critically hit and its fuel canister exploded onto him. As his mech attempted to smother the flames with fire retardant foam, his head sensors became obscured with foam. With the autocarbine useless he was forced to use the retractable blade on his shield. Getting to melee range was incredibly dangerous and with only the torso mounted weapons functional , it provided too little defense. Aggression was the only way to survive the encounter, he decided.

His thruster nozzles burst to life , propelling him forward like a battering ram , slamming into everything in its path. He smashed into one of the bugs and thrust the shield blade down into its thorax, splitting it open to reveal its still throbbing organs inundated with greenish blood. He fired off his thrusts again , this time using the head mounted heavy machine gun to take out stragglers before bashing the rest with the shield. He dashed once more , turning his side of the battle into a typhoon of white smoke and sinew.

Dizzy and Wasp use the grapples on their thinktank to maneuver around the horde while they fired down using two mandible mounted machine guns. They fired off explosive impact grenades from the manipulator arms , raining down a hail of explosions on the vulnerable topsides of the crabs.

Reaper had stayed frozen as the fighting continued. He saw the snarling beasts with their barbed suckers and blade like mandibles as nightmarish creatures that were merely delusions. His cracked mind was unable to comprehend the onslaught. Even watching his teammates struggle did not snap him from his listless state.

As the monsters approached him closer and the fires of combat began to encroach on him, an idea emerged. This was all a dream. Nothing more. Even if he were to die, he would just wake up. In a land of scrap ,surrounded by the shrill screeches , it couldn't be anything else. Everything was airy, light and incorporeal. The pain,the hunger and the fear were just his brain trying to commit to memory some useless information from the day prior.

While his mind slowly drifted away from reality, the infected mini-mechs began to swarm around him with their mandibles slashing at the armor. As the weight of the possesed machines began to pile onto his mech, the weight soon became too much causing it to topple backwards. The loud bash prompted Barry to turn around to see Reapers mech covered in those devilish monsters.

He aimed his autocarbine and fired the underslung plasmathrower. The entire pile burst into flames. The skin and flesh burnt to a crisp , leaving only the shriveled mechanical wreckage behind. Reapers mech had lost much of its armor with only the internal structure remaining.


	35. Chapter 35

The gaps in the armor were ashen with bits of charred flesh that was stripped of the beasts. Barry considered whether to go to Reaper till Karin yelled at him to continue to cut the door open. As Reaper's mech lay smoldering , Ross dashed past it and picked up the unused autocarbine from its charred ruins.

Karin had already emptied her rocket pods when a few of the crab beasts had torn off the auto-minigun from its mount , leaving her with the head mounted machine gun and her carbine. Unfortunately, there was only one full magazine left and one full tank of plasma. With the snapping mandibles chewing away her armor, she used her shield to bash them to pieces. She swung her arm wide to her side , knocking one of the creatures on its back. She pressed the barrel of her carbine into the overturned monster and fired a single shot into its thorax. It broke into bleeding pieces with bits of green entrails mixed with the black gears and red hydraulic fluid.

Proximity rounds were loaded up into Ross's carbine through the autoloader inside the magazine housing. Each round chambered and then armed a proximity fuse that would air burst above the closest moving target. He fired one round up into the circling horde running back and forth on the horizon. That single shell exploded into several shape charged spikes that eviscerated nearly a dozen of the crabs. A burst from the plasmathrower ignited the open wounds of any that survived the attack.

Ross boosted up into air and targeted three separate groups of nearly two dozen each. From the East came the two of the packs while another was attempting to flank Barry as he continued to torch the door. He fired a burst at the two Eastern groups first, letting loose with the remaining Dagger rockets he had left. His auto-minigun began to fire behind him at the flanking group while he floated in the air to get their attention.

They maneuvered towards him while firing they fired on him. One of the crabs surprisingly began to fire a flak cannon , its shells bursting in the air around him. As he turned to face this group, an incessant chirp began to play into his ear. The missile lock indicator began to flash on his HUD with an arrow pointing to the direction the missile was approaching from. He turned to see three Dagger rockets burning towards him. He twisted the mech's head and began to fire at the rockets. Two burst into flames while the third overshot him and blew up 15 meters behind him. A shower of burning embers bounced off his mech before disappearing into the aether.

He scanned for the unit that launched the missile strike but his boosters had overheated before he could finish his scan. He landed a top a crab, bursting its shell and spilling its guts onto the ground. He heard the sound of heavy cannons firing in the distance as he regained his footing Streamers of exhaust danced around the giant-scorpion like strider. Ross activated the targeting optics to zoom in on the strider. On its body were tiny mites scurrying across and jumping haplessly at Ryuki in an attempt to capture him.

Inside his mech, Ryuki watched the lock symbols populate his HUD as half a dozen rockets raced up towards him. His sensor net picked up a pair of bipedal walkers , nearly the same size as his own mech, racing around at the foot of the strider. He discharged several flak bundles to take care of the incoming ordinance but lost sight of the attackers.

The heat meter was inching towards 75 percent to shutdown state as the thrusters had been running hot for nearly 5 minutes. The heat load was overtaking the discharge rate. With the heat sinks fully exposed it would take nearly 6 minutes to discharge all the thermal energy. He needed to make the final push or he would be stuck on the ground. He boosted up through the gaping hole in the ceiling , hoping that the strider's attention on him would prompt it to follow him up. For good measure , he fired off the last dozen Dagger rockets into its sensor mast to keep it from scanning for other targets.

The strider fired off a blast from its cannon straight up through the gap and hit the ceiling above Ryuki. 80 percent till shutdown. One leg stretched out and grasped the edge of the hole followed by another leg. Good. It was going to climb up. A large group of crabs scuttled about its body , firing off sporadic cannon and rocket fire with little to no aim. The rounds whizzed past him while the rockets exploded harmlessly some distance away.

The scorpion pulled itself up through the gap , its cannon slowly turning to face him. He flipped open the safety cover for the launch controls of the BSRM-1. A warning message popped up in front of him telling Ryuki that the launch sequence was beginning. Red flashing lights pulsated in the flight deck with an incessant beep to make sure he was completely at attention on the missile. Unfortunately , he didn't have the time to watch over the process while he evaded indiscriminate fire from the scorpion mech.

The back-pack silo began to spin while the launching rails extended and expanded. The metallic grey three corner silo stopped and separated from the top portion as it swung onto the rails. Bay doors opened up and a rocket motor was mounted to the rails via a set of actuated clamps. The top portion of the silo that remained in its original position then swung over the rocket body while the silo returned while still rotating, preparing the next missile.

The warhead was loaded onto the rocket like a bolt being screwed into a fixture. A distinct beveled pyramid sat atop the rocket with its nose blinking with a series of lights around its perimeter. The nose cone was clear , revealing the homing module that would guide the warheads in their terminal flight phase.

A klaxon sounded and an urgent voice announced that the heat coursing through the triple tandem reactors was reaching a critical level. The voice played over the targeting system, warning him that the missile launch was imminent and to move to a safe distance.

Ryuki angled his mech above the scorpion as it pulled itself up into the cargo hold. It looked like a scorpion mother carrying its offspring on its back as it crawled back on its feet. He saw his opening and disengaged the thrusters. "GET DOWN!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. Freefalling down between the legs, he jammed down the launch on the launch button while simultaneously firing off a set of tracer beacons.

The missile lifted off , the force of which propelled the Lionheart downward. As it floated in the air , it seemed as if the internal guidance was contemplating its next course of action. It floated in the air for what seemed like ages but it was only a millisecond later that the warhead disengaged from the rocket. Its panels exploded open to reveal the nuclear bomblets. A split second later the bombs burst from the warhead directly into the scorpion.

With only one active warhead , the concussive force of the detonation was tempered by the massive strider body and the interstitial walls and ceiling. The burst of light activated the blast shield for the head sensors on Ryuki's mech , slamming down a solid lead divider to protect the optics.

As his mech continued to face upwards, he reignited the boosters to halt his descent. An overwhelming concussive wave buffeted his mech, making flight incredibly difficult. With the thrusters burning at max power and the heat meter at 95 percent, he had only one option, to crash land as softly as possible.

He twisted his body to force the feet to face down and then overcharged the ferromagnetic hydraulics to force the mech to an upright position. The knee joints were released to float freely in attempt to absorb the incoming shock of landing from nearly 100 meters

The crash had stunned the mech's motor and hydraulics systems , forcing it to stay in its knelt position. Above Ryuki , he could hear the chain reaction of the plasma containment tanks exploding and spreading out the burning liquid onto everything in its vicinity. He could have sworn that he heard the sound of steam boiling off the crab bots.

A few minutes early, on the other side of the fight, Barry was able to cut through the door but needed an extra push to force the slab out of the way. The flow of mechs had stopped but there was an ominous pause in the fighting. Both sides seemed exhausted, with the crab-bots circling around them, nipping at them but otherwise keeping their distance.

Ross still wondered what had launched the missiles. None of the crabs that he destroyed had anything more than simple guns or rarely a flak gun. The pit of his stomach began to well up with tension and emptiness. His skin crawled and his sweat ran cold. The lull wasn't due to their combat prowess. They were waiting for something.

The shrill sound of rounds whizzing past by them awoke their battlefield intuition. The waves of cannon fodder were only to wear them down. The real assault was beginning. A few rounds flew past them but air bursted , hitting them with shape charged spikes. Ablative armor kept the damage to a minimum while the reactive armor began to heal itself of the gaps in its plating.

At the horizon a pair of silhouettes emerged. They seemed to be mechs similar to their own though somehow they seemed completely foreign , bordering on inhuman as far as they were concerned. Then the sound of a snapping jaw echoed. The silhouettes morphed and distorted with noticeable jaws forming from their shadowy forms. Their maws grew till it seemed to cover their entire heads.

When light fell on them , they saw the beasts. Not a single centimeter of their bodies were metal. The green flesh that peaked out from underneath the grey carapace armor flexed and bulged. The organic armor covered their bodies except for the joints and their heads. The snapping jaws were like those of alligators but with the razor teeth of a shark..

Their tongues stretched out , hanging in the air and dripping with slimy grey saliva. A low growl rose up from their bulging throats With no skin ,all their muscle fibers were exposed, the tendons and fat deposits in full view. Their eyes though were the sensor modules of the mechs they consumed. As they approached, the apertures of their eyes narrowed. The taller of the pair, with the missile racks mounted to its back and a set of dual chain guns on each arm, roared. It looked hungry.

Then the radio erupted. "Hit the dirt!". That was the signal. They dived into the ground, keeping their backs facing upwards to protect their crew compartments from whatever may be about to explode. Nuclear hazard symbols began to populate their HUDs. Urgent voices yelped about high energy radiation and proximity.

As they lay on the ground, the two mechs roared but their voices seemed to echo away from them. They were facing something above them. The HUD displays flickered then turned off. Then the pressure wave approached. It felt as if giant tankers were being dropped on them, the sound of whining metal shrieked as the overpressure pounded on them.

A burst of light originating from above flash fried everything within the two cargo bays. The menacing chimeras exploded into flames as their exposed flesh burned and torn from the nuclear firestorm. The remaining monsters did the same.

Nearly ten thousand Sieverts later, all that survived were those safely stowed away inside the closed shells of the spec-op mechs. Everything else lay charred with molten metal flowing between them like tiny streams of water.


	36. Chapter 36

But those two figures still stood. The bright had shrouded them but they remained like shadows cast by hapless victims caught in a nuclear blaze. They didn't move other than the flakes and bits of their charred remains falling off. It seemed a small gust of wind would have blown them down.

As the charred flesh fell away , the endoskeleton slowly came into view. It was odd though, that the armor was pristine. The flesh and bone that covered it must have absorbed all the energy from the blast. The heads crumbled, their jaws were the last to fall apart. The carapace armor disintegrated though bits and pieces of the bone still remained where the connective tissue wasn't completely torched.

It seemed obvious then that they weren't actually disabled. When one of the machines raised its arm and clasped its fist. Its sloped head was scarred with long streaks of heat burns. Its four eyes set onto the sides of the head blinked a dim red. A long rabbit ear like antenna stretched up from the side of its head but the tip had broken off, exposing the transceiver loop and electrical wire. a

It took a step forward, shedding more of its old under the crumbling flesh was a scorched body, blackened by the nuclear flames . A living shadow with red glowing eyes. As it approached, Barry hit the thrusters for a ramming charge into the cut door, busting his way through but also damaging the shield and several arm actuators in the process. He looked back to wave the others through but saw the two shadows looming over them, inching their way forward with embers of fire lifting up from the coal charred bodies.

He saw them lift up their guns. The muzzle blasts were relentless, blinding him as he was unprepared for the attack. The others still recovering from the waves of crabs were at a disadvantage. With low ammunition and poor cover, they were wide open for the assault. Dizzy and Wasp, perched high above the combat continued to fire off its ground penetrating RADAR charges , dropping nearly its entire magazine , with little effect. Ross fired his remaining missiles but were blocked by the other shadow and its giant sized shield.

Barry boosted forward, throwing his cracked shield at the walking shadows, smashing the four eyed machine in its torso before the shield bearer could block it. The shield shadow's hexa-eyes began to glow red , the light illuminating the antenna horn that grew out from its head. It turned, the horn now pointing at Barry who could clearly see that it was an antenna array that looked as if hard,scaly skin had grown over it in patches.

Ross took this as his opening , firing off the remaining air burst rounds at the shadows before the magazine switched to the armor piercing rounds. Unlike the crabs, the armor on these mechs were thick and solid. The airburst rounds did minimal damage, only leaving behind deep gashes and molten dents on the shadows.

He switched his carbine over to fully automatic fire, hoping the barrage of armor piercing rounds would dissuade the phantoms from their attack but the shield bearer successfully deflected the shots. Karin boosted around as the others were fighting, hoping to get a flanking shot on the ethereal black iron soldiers. She approached them as quickly as possible , keeping as low as possible until the last possible moment before popping up and firing off the remaining rockets and grenades she had.

When she reached the jump point, she saw the heat meter rising rapidly . A patch of radioactive debris had stuck to a ventilation duct , a goopy mess of grey-green flesh possibly the entrails from a crab that had burst in flames. The shadow moved aside its shield to reveal an enormous grapple claw, aiming the sharp claws at her. .She boosted up anyway but the rocket propelled claw grabbed hold over torso and in one fluid motion tossed her towards the wall. The impact cracked open the thruster heat exchangers, destroying her limited flight ability.

She hanged from the wall with one hand and foot while the other arm began to fire the carbine at the cable attached to the grapple claw. The shots pierced through the armored jacket of the cable and splashed out in a ring of molten embers and sparks through the other end several times before the it broke off. With the cable disconnected, the grapple lost power and fell off , allowing her to freely jump back down.

The shadows jumped off their perch down into the fresh graveyard and began to rush towards the opened exit. Ross attempted to ram one but the boosters had failed as he made the charge. His mech lost its balance and slammed face first into the ground.

Barry watch in horror as the two shadows proceeded to burn towards him. The magazine of his gun was empty, leaving him with only the plasmathrower and a few remaining Dagger rockets. The rockets burst out of the hip lower torso mounted tubes but the fiery impacts did not slow down the ghastly phantoms. The plasmathrower quickly became useless as the fuel tanks ran dry after a few pulls of the trigger.

They seemed to loom over him, their backs ablaze with fire. They were angels of death come to reap what is theirs. But the fires enveloped them, overtook them. Barry's ears perked up when he heard the distinct boom of Ryuki's autocannons. The flames that erupted from the back of the shadows reached up into the air. Licks of flame sprouted up and lashed the shadows. There, above them, burning out his heat exchangers , Ryuki's Lionheart. It came crashing down like a red hot comet.

Its impact tossed the shadows off their feet. Ryuki's mech stood up, its camouflage stripped off and leaving bare metal exposed. The armor parts and conormal packs had long stretches of scars and cracks crisscrossing like webs. Small contrails of water vapor lifted up from its surface, ostensibly due to the massive amount of radiation that it had absorbed.

He rose up from a cloud of ash and dust with the autocannons in hand. He fired both into the back of the shield bearer, tearing it into two neat pieces. He aimed one of the canons at the head of the other shadow. The white phosphorus of the muzzle flash formed a cloud around its head. As the exhaust dissipated, it seemed to take the torso along with it, leaving behind a wriggling puddle of slowly dieing sinew and organs.

The phantoms were exorcised with 60 mm high explosive rounds, their carcases smoldering atop the ruins. The armor Ryuki's mech wore had protected it from the nuclear detonation. His mech now wore radioactive patches of camouflage, dark grey and black. Had all the light been snuffed out, it would have been possible to seem his machine glow in the dark.

The fight was over. One casualty was tallied. Reaper had just stood there and died. No one fathomed what made him do that. Nor was there time to gather him from the wreckage. With the hatches melted shut from the plasma fire Barry poured onto him, there was no way to crack the shell and extract Reaper's corpse. There was no way to safely step out in the presence of fallout.

"We gotta go " Ryuki said as he pointed his left autocannon towards the sliced open doorway. Karin rigged several explosive charges as improvised land mines to give them enough time to gain distance between them and the horde.

They reached the end of the hallway to find an access door that had a working key pad. They needed to someone get out and activate the door without absorbing too much radiation. The hardsuits could have enough protection but then once the hatch is opened there was no guarantee that the pilots deck wouldn't be flooded by the radiation that Ryuki's mech continued to emit.

"Punch it, if that doesnt work we'll cut through" Karin said unexpectedly. For someone so mechanically inclined, a brute force method seemed to be ungraceful. "I don't want to stay on this frakin' ship forever, just kick the damn door down" she said with a bit of frustrated anger in her voice.

Barry obliged and tapped the control panel with his foot. Even a slight movement was enough to break the wall panel right off. Luckily that was what was required to force the doorway open. The safety relays must have been triggered, causing the door to demagnetise.

They bull rushed through before the sliding hatch suddenly slammed down shut. It had to be the parasites. They knew where they were. They were going to corral them , Ryuki thought. This was the final confrontation, he knew it. "Keep moving!" he yelled through the radio.

They made their way 200 meters to their destination, an access port into a funicular lift. Everything seemed orderly and quiet , a combination that seemed to bode ill. The ship wasn't creaking and groaning, the walls weren't falling apart or grimey. It seemed like a different ship altogether, one that seemed to have been frozen in time. An immaculate relic of a future that may never exist.

When the sliding hatch opened up without their instruction, they found a fully functioning airlock leading onto the lift. Arrayed at the intersection between the walls and ceiling were what looked to be exhaust ports and shower heads. The sliding hatch behind them slid shut silently once they had all passed through, sealing them inside the airlock.

The shower heads began to pour out a white mist while the vents whirred to life . The mist was composed of tiny particles of cadmium and silver to absorb all the radiation being emitted from their mechs. The white mist changed to a light blue color , perhaps to indicate that they had completed their tasks. This blue mist rushed into the vents and cleared away from the airlock.

Ryuki watched the onboard geiger counter slowly count down to a few millisieverts of radiation. The shower was complete and the exit from the decontamination room opened up. Lights flickered on along the path of the funicular leading up an incline into what would be the primary decks and crew sections. The dorsal auxiliary ship would be docked somewhere there but so would the secondary bridge.

They stepped on, with their weapons ready with what little munitions they had left. The tilted their heads up to watch the walls as the lift began to its ascent. The shaft didn't seem to long yet the lift was taking its time to get to the top. It could have been the weight was bearing down on the motors , that they were being overloaded.

It was a few anxious moments later the lift jerked to a stop just a few feet from the platform. They climbed up one by one while Dizzy used the rocket grapples to propel her thinktank up. Assembled together they found themselves standing in front a pair of sliding clear steel hatches. The oversized hatches were wide enough to allow them to walk through shoulder to shoulder without much worry about collisions.

One set after the other opened up for them, leading into a gleaming white hallway. They cautiously walked through , taking an arrow formation incase something were to pop out. Now on deck, they could see the colored lines on the floor that led to the various ship facilities. The auxiliary craft was marked with a red line that led down to the opposite side of the ship from the secondary bridge.

"Alright, you head to the ship" Ryuki said. "Sir?" Barry, hoping for clarification. "Im going to the bridge. Im shutting this thing down" Ryuki replied. Silence. "Ross, you're in command now".

They stood there , silent and motionless. Ryuki wondered if this would be his last moment before he saw his crew. He wanted to say something but there was nothing to say that wasn't already known to them.

"Move out" ,Ross radioed the team. "Once we're in, prep for launch" he said.


	37. Chapter 37

"Hey wait a minute, we're leaving him behind?" Barry worriedly asked. "Whats he gonna do ?".

"This ship needs to breach the surface before we can escape. He's going to the controls to get it out of here. And then probably initiate the self-destruct so that it doesn't follow us" Ross surmised.

Ryuki made his way towards the bridge. White gleaming walls boxed him into a narrow passageway barely large enough to allow his mech to pass through. He considered stepping out and walking the rest of the way but a cold chill sprang up over his skin and his hairs stood on end. The thought of being outside, unarmed and unprotected, sent fear racing back into his head. He thought he had succumbed it but really all he did was push it aside by replacing it with the need to escape. His team had now departed, leaving him with only his own concerns. And those led eventually to the idea of death.

In the darkness of his pilot bay , with the dim lights flashing and the shadows swaying, death approached him like an emptiness that spread from the bright harsh light that poured through his view screen. He focused on it , even as he piloted , to watch it grow and cover his controls and displays. It could have been a trick played by his mind. His vision may have been adjusting to a different level of light due to the changing size of his irises.

A good reason didn't stop him from slowly approaching that event horizon of the mind. He felt drips of sweat develop down the sides of his torsos. His forehead cooled as drops slowly flowed down to his cheeks. One drop slipped into his eye , causing his vision to go blurry as he rubbed his eyes. The blur had warped the immaculate hallway into a strange psychedelic landscape of merging light and shadows with walls that seemed to heave and breath and spill into the darkness.

His eyes adjusted , the displays returned to their pale states and the hallway no longer looked like an endless starched landscape. In front of him was the hatch that led into the bridge. It was too small to take the mech through. He waited there for a bit, wondering what to do. He could blow it open to make space but that could destroy the flight controls.

He breathed heavily. The lever to open the hatch was a few centimeters away from his right hand. His hand was shaking as his mind couldn't process the decision. It jerked as if stuck but came closer to the lever until finally the tips of his fingers hit the rubberized handle. Instantly, he pulled the lever down and popped the hatch open.

He climbed down and approached the hatch. It wasn't particularly large but seemed heavily armored. The control panel too was armored with a few clear partitions for buttons and the display. The green unlock button pulsed . It seemed the door had already been unlocked or was left that way.

He tapped the button and heard a series of bolts and locks whir into motion. The loud clang of the door indicated that it had fully undone the safety bolts and stops and waited for him to pull it open.

He hesitated for a moment , wondering if death was on the otherside. Death was something to fear but oddly elicited curiosity. He was tentative about it but his heart pounded with excitement. The adrenaline began to flow through his veins and a new strength took over.

He pulled it open , expecting to see disgusting fistulas and polyps but he saw something that was much more disturbing. Standing at the bridge controls was one of many figures. The back of its head was ridged like the lobes of a brain but it pulsated with green veins . Something seemed to be stretched over its face, some kind of mask Ryuki thought.

The creature turned around as the others continued to manipulate the controls. The face was human. It was human once at least. It was stretched over like rubber. All the parts of the face were there but none of the bone or cartilage to support it. The nose was flat and the cheeks were bloated. There was no jaw but the lips and mouth were still there. The eyes though, they were completely gone and replaced with chromatic disks.

Then he heard the voices.

They couldn't talk but he could hear them some how. It was a low hum at first , like people whispering to each other in a quiet room. But instead of soft words they sounded like cicada chirps that stretched and morphed their frequency ranges until it became maddening. They were trying to talk to him.

Eventually the sounds coalesced into something that seemed understandable. They were words , he could tell that much ,but still disjointed. It seemed they were attempting to figure out how to talk to him by probing his mind for word associations. It was a horrifying experience to hear words so stretched and distorted. If he were believer he would have thought that this was some demon speaking to him in tongues.

The face was unmoving but inexplicably he could hear cogent, concise phrases coming from its mouth. It was buzzing through his head, all the words being dumped on to him. Soon they harmonized into a weird atonal melody , surely enough to drive anyone crazy. But somehow he managed to survive the psychic assault.

"You have been disturbing us" he hard clearly. The chromatic eyes looked at him , the muscles on the face began to twitch as if to show some kind of emotion. "Our launch has been delayed" he heard the voice speak again.

Thats right, Ryuki remembered why he was there. Force the ship to launch ,make it crash upward through the ice shelf and allow his team to escape in the auxiliary ship. "We know what your comrades are doing" he heard the voice echo through his skull.

"We do not wish to engage in combat on this deck. It was assumed that you would have been captured by our troops in the cargo holds. When you breached into the primary hull we had realized that our containment plan had failed".

"What's this about ?" Ryuki mustered. His head was still dizzy , making it difficult to say anything more. "We cannot allow you to escape. Our operatives would be in grave danger otherwise". Operatives. That makes sense. The people who evacuated the base, they were the operatives. This ship was their base.

"What do you plan to do" Ryuki asked as the pounding in his head became more manageable. His vision ,though ,worsened. It was them, it had to be. They were disorienting him to keep him docile. Behind him, the mech waited. He could slip back in and blast plasma fire into the bridge.

"You will not pilot your machine" his mind told him. His body felt otherwise. All the maneuvers drilled into his head, all the instincts that began to pulse through his blood, they were telling him to run for it. "Even if you do get back in, what do you intend to do? Your comrades are already surrounded and you have no way of escaping through the ice shelf. Surrender now", it said.

The other beings continued their work as if nothing was happening. They were drones , this one must be the drone commander. He inched his way backwards but a forceful pressure against his back resisted him. He turned his head to see no obstacles in his path. He could feel something trying to control him. All his might now focused on overcoming the grasp of the parasite. His aching body felt as if it was being pulled down and towards the bulbous figures in front of him.

His ears began to ring and vertigo began to take away his senses. His stomach churned as if he were on a boat in the middle of a typhoon. Sweat poured out from under his hair and raced down his sides . His legs began to chafe , his body contorting against his will.

His body only had enough strength left to activate the hardsuits retrieval protocol. He could no longer guarantee control over himself but the suit was impervious to psychic attacks. He released his body so to concentrate completely on maintaining his grasp over his thoughts.

The suit turned itself around and speedily entered the mech. Instantly the voice disappeared. The hardened shell had blocked it like a faraday cage blocks radio and wireless. He activated the missile silo and armed another warhead. They definitely know now that he is ready to fire.

The spike of radiation sends quivering waves of skin over the distorted human face of the parasite-alien. It cannot speak to him , ostensibly to threaten his team or himself should he fire the missile point blank. It wasn't necessary anyway, his displays were flashing red warnings and a constant drone of klaxons and voice alerts made sure that he knew what he was committing to would be insanely dangerous.

He turned on the loudspeaker. "Launch the ship now or I will turn this ship into a radioactive heap" he said. He turned the speaker off and observed. The drone commander stood for a brief moment. Perhaps contemplating how long it would take for the guards to rush back. The commander had made such a naive mistake. But that mistake revealed the inner workings of these creatures. It was completely possible the reason why it didn't realize the tactical mistake of not guarding the bridge because the mind it leached off didn't realize it either.

Now if he could just survive the ordeal he could actually tell someone about it. The missile rail slowly arched over his shoulder , pointing straight at the commander. The sirens reached an apex of annoying ringing. Everything was telling him how stupid this was. One of them would have to stand down before this went nuclear.

The cargo airlock into the auxiliary ship was big enough to handle very large cargo and freight containers. Their three mechs and the think tank fit inside it comfortably. Dizzy scanned using her onboard short range seismic sensors. She could see large blobs show up on her scanner, slowly approaching the airlock from all directions.

"Hey Dizzy , I figured it out!" Wasp said with disturbing enthusiasm. For the longest time he hadn't said a single word. Dizzy assumed he was too shell shocked to speak up. "You frakkin idiot, what did you do!" she yelled back. "Hey man, they don't call this a think tank for nothing", he responded.

"What?" she yelled. "Its a tank and tanks have cannons yeah? Not just those peashooters you've been using. I mean, didn't you wonder why the hell this thing is so big even though it only fits three people?", Wasp replied.

"Whats your point, man!?" she yelled back as she watched the scanner fill up with white blobs about to envelope them in a kill box. "I got the cannon working, well more like a railgun. I got access to it, it just needs to turn out now. It was retracted into the thorax ,probably to keep it safe. Now we can activate it!" he yelled.

Ferromagnetic fluid began to fill bladders and hydraulics, the sound of which like sloshing soda in someones throat. The top panels of the thorax popped open and then spun around on the multidimensional joints. Coming down ,they formed armored shields on the sides and gave space to the rail gun to sit snugly on top.

The magnetic rails extended out and the hyper-capacitors began to buzz with energy. The air crackled from the static electric discharge from the gun assembly with tiny sparks intercepting dust like lightning bolts.

Barry and Karin worked as quickly as possible on the access hatch. The ship wasn't built for a strike force to be easily transported. The doors were designed to keep pirates on the outside but it also kept the soldiers in. Bashing the control panel failed to give any useful results and now the plasma torches were burning.

They could hear the low rumble of the oncoming horde. They had to rely on Ross and Dizzy to hold back the flood. Karin thought it was hopeless. Barry strung together curses and swears into an unending run on sentence.


	38. Chapter 38

A new display opened up in front of Wasp. This floating square of light was light grey with bright white silhouettes of the entire floor. It was an x-ray scanner ,Wasp realized. And it was for sniping with the railgun. His lips creased into the slightest of smiles. Immediately he began to search for targets of opportunity.

"I can see em all, Dizzy" he pinpointed the bottlenecks that would make for the best killzones. "Im gonna drill these frakkers" he laughed somewhat menacingly. "Whatever man, just make sure none of them get past us", Dizzy replied.

He could see a line of them approaching the locked hatch that separated them from the cargo airlock. They were in a neat row , perfect for a single piercing shot. Now, it was time to choose, head or heart? Wasp would have tossed a coin to figure that out but chose the torso instead, thinking that the mass of blood and guts would be piloting from there.

Three mechs , similar to the ones that were fried by the nuke on the floor below, came rolling fast. He lined up the cannon and waited for the hyper capacitors to fully charge. The liquid cooling pipes were at full pressurization , waiting for the melting heat of the friction between the sabot round and the rails. All of it would be pumped out through a rapid discharge heat exchanger with the propensity to melt itself under normal usage.

His finger slowly pressed down on the trigger before the primary click of the gun activation. Then he slammed the trigger down to fire off the round. A brilliant blue streak exploded out of the gun barrel followed by the jettisoned disposable heat sinks popping out like red hot pop-tarts. The round flew at nearly ten times the speed of sound on Earth's surface, which on Glacius would be enough to reach orbital velocity.

The round neatly pierced through the airlock doorway and travelled down the hallway towards the incredibly slow parasite-mechs. Their response time was too slow to dodge the metal spear that now turned star-blue from the air friction imparting enough energy to turn the micro bomblets inside its core to turn into electromagnetically stabilized plasma spheres.

When the round penetrated the first mech , its shell began to disassemble yet the solid warhead continued on. A few bomblets separate like flower petals and come in contact with the gooey innards of the first mech , igniting its flesh into burning plasma fire.

It leaves the first mech through a clean hole bored through its back and approaches the second machine with only one percent of its momentum discharged thanks to the incredibly thin and fine nose cone of the warhead that diverted all the energy of the impact away from the core. The round drilled through and deposited its plasma eggs into the second mech in haste , leaving it only a fraction of a second after it entered.

The final mech bore the brunt of the remaining energy of the round. The tip now melted away as it made its final borehole as the remaining shell solidified into thin spikes of shrapnel. The remaining plasma spheres exploded inside with the mix of pin size shrapnel , creating a fluid like mix of pure energy and shrapnel shards. To those on the outside , it looked as if the mech had exploded into a shower of small detritus as most of the mech had been vaporized in the primary impact. The shards continued past and eviscerated everything behind the first three mechs. All that was left now was several burning hulks spewing grey and green viscous fluid in an expanding pool of sinew and guts. One of the mechs almost looked as if it was raising its hand for a non-existent friend to help it up before the hydraulics leaked out completely.

The airlock door still stood but with a hole bored through it. "What the frak was that!?" Dizzy yelled at Wasp. "I told you , this thing is a tank" he replied.

Ross saw the blue streak but only realized what it was a moment after the first mech exploded with licks of flames crawling out from under its armor. Its torso was carved open with a gaping hole left behind by the exploding balls of plasma when he figured it was the gun mounted to Dizzy's tank that had done that.

While Dizzy and Wasp alternated between elated and angry , the walls began to bulge. Ross could hear the sound of the steel straining under the pressure of the bugs trying to cut through it. Then the yellow traces began to appear , the mark of plasma cutters.

He prepared himself by taking a charging stance with his shield while he kept his autocarbine at his side. Conservation of ammunition was his only choice since there was no telling how long this fight would go on. He waited, watched and coughed incessantly. The stress of combat combined with the pneumonia welling up in his lungs had sent his body reeling. And then ,as if a reprieve from some valkyrie , the plasma cutters stopped. The skittering feet began to sound farther and farther away.

"They're pulling out" Ross said over the point to point radio comm. He wondered if it was the railgun that scared them off. Wasp watched the x-ray scanner display , noting that they were all heading in the same direction, towards where Ryuki had gone. "Uh, they aren't pulling out , their going straight to the Cap", Wasp exhaled.

Popping sounds from some distance away ricocheted through the hallway and into the airlock. Explosions probably, Ross thought. It had to be him fighting. The ship began to rumble under the feet. It was lifting off.

"Get that door down as fast as you can!" Ross yelled. Knowing the Cap, the explosions were from him barreling through the hallway at full thrust , guns blazing. Or not. When Ross popped the airlock doors open, he could see a cloud of grey smoke filling the gleaming white hallway. Popping out of it was Ryuki , his shield up. Too fast, Ross said to himself. "Slow down!" he yelled over the radio. Ryuki tossed his shield behind him and attached to its underside were a set of primed grenades with flashing red tops. As he rocketed towards the airlock, he turned around and activated the torso mounted retro boosters to keep his momentum going. He aimed his autocannon and fired a round. The impact of the round cooked off the grenades and engulfed the hallway in shrapnel and blue fire.

A burst of air erupted outwards as the sliding door opened, relieving the pressure that had built up while the airlock was closed. The air rushed towards the fires that slurped it up like hungry wolves. In return, they flames grew larger and hotter just as Ryuki's mech broke through the firewall . The outstretched fiery wisps seemed to grasp and lash at Ryuki's thoroughly charred mech , attempting to pull it back into the fight. His boosters ignited for the final charge , throwing his mech into a crash course with the rest of the team.

They squeezed up onto the sides as the flames spread into the airlock. Dizzy launched the rocket grapple anchors up onto the ceiling . The thinktank flipped over so that its wheeled feet touched the walls and the railgun faced down the hallway. Ryuki came crashing a moment late. The fireball he arrived in dissipated once the airlock closed up and negative pressure was applied by the automatic fire suppression system. Barry took the opportunity to kick the ship hatch down to reveal a long suspended gantry that lead to the cargo hold of the docked frigate.

The ship began to rock back and forth and the sound of explosions raced along the hull. No doubt it had began to breach the thick icy mantle . The horde began to regroup and rush the airlock once again. Wasp decided it was now a good time to try the railgun's secondary firing mode , an attack that launches a warhead filled with depleted uranium marbles surrounding a high explosive charge. The combination of the momentum imparted by the gun and the force of the explosion would create a screen of flak that would perforate everything in front of it while simultaneously releasing a pressure wave strong enough to cause the mechanical beasts to essentially vomit out their internal organs.

Dizzy provided fire support as the rest of the team began to stream across the gantry and oblivious to Wasp's plan. When the power cut out from her controls and the lights dimmed she yelled at Wasp, knowing right that instant that he was up to no good.

The ultracapacitors were fully charged , fresh heatsinks slid into place and the molten salt cooling system was near its breaking point. When he fired the single round, arches of electricity jumped out from the rails and burst the exposed capacitors , causing their capacitive fluid to stain the thinktank a dark blood red.

The round left the barrel at 5 kilometer per second, fast enough to reach London from New York in 18 minutes. The body of the round disintegrated a moment later when the explosive detonated , concentrating all its force forward by a shape charged plate that acted like a parabolic dish. The depleted uranium pellets shred through the walls and the mechs alike, disintegrating everything in the hallway into a mist of grey and green. The sound of the pellets impacting the far end of the wall revealed that they had turned to plasma and were now melting out the bridge. The rush of air leaving the hallway proved that the hull had been punctured thoroughly and the bridge probably disintegrated under the force and heat of the impacting plasma balls.

The power returned to her controls at which point she ejected the now useless cannon and closed up the turret section of the thinktank's thorax. "Not bad yeah?" Wasp quipped. "Listen,mate, I am going to give you a beating so powerful that it will be passed down by oral tradition because everyone in your frakkin family is gonna be paraplegic afterwards" she spoke calmly. Wasp made sure not to speak again.

The ships cargo hold was open and revealed a space big enough to fit only three mechs. Dizzy and Wasp abandoned the tank, though Wasp felt a pang of regret leaving it there. The transport ship shook hard , knockin Ryuki off his feet. He glanced down to see that the ground was pulling away. The docking bay was wide open allowing the ship to make a clean getaway. But that also meant that it was open for invasion. They crawled out from the walls and through the bay doors , thousands of angry machines pulsating like a murderous colony of ants.

The airlock was soon overrun but the bugs did not advance further. Instead, they made a path for a platoon of mechs armed with an array of large caliber guns and missiles. Before Ryuki could consider what to do , they opened fire, hitting the frigate's broadside and dorsal section. The armor held out but it would only be a matter of time before it would be penetrated.

Ryuki yelled over the comm ,telling Dizzy to launch. The other mechs had spent all their ammunition and thus making them useless in the fight. They needed to launch now if they were to survive. "Launch ,dammit!" he yelled again. The cargo bay closed up and the docking clamps were blown off. The frigate dropped down before its Alcubierre drives activated and smoothly egressed out of the bay.

Ryuki stood at the platform of the gantry , huddled behind a stack of red and green cargo containers, watching the ship fly away. Once he lost sight of them, he rose up and began to return fire. Plumes of smoke erupted from his mechs torso as he launched unguided rockets and impact grenades at the platoon. A shower of sparks gushed out from one of the mechs as an armor piercing electromagnetic shell electrified its internal components ,burning it from the inside out. A red stained mech from the rear lines rushed up and knocked the still standing dead mech off the gantry and down into the frozen tundra. Each of its arms had a pair of chainguns each being fed from a giant backpack with armored munition belts snaking out like metal tongues.


	39. Chapter 39

The Vulcan ,so named after its quad rotary cannons , seemed to tense up its body as if restraints prevented its movement. It seemed to fight against an invisible force , twisting its head around like a chained animal. What Ryuki thought was a completely functional head , began to bulge and bleed from slowly widening gaps. Apertures arrayed around its clear plated face ,normally wide to absorb as much light as possible in dim environments, narrowed down into points.

The blood gushed forth from its face until the head itself split apart , forming a mouth with squared teeth and erupted with a chilling guttural roar. Parts of its armor shed from its body to reveal the toned musculature underneath. Instead of bare flesh , its skin was composed of semi-transparent reactive armor , a sort of scale mail.

Its roar rattled through the ships hull and right through the thick armor of Ryuki's mech. It tilted its head and turned to Ryuki. His mind was frozen on the sight of the red lenses glaring and the spiked tongue lapping. It seemed to be the true embodiment of all his fears. A monster that was relentless like the shadows and shrouded in trickling blood. It raised its arms.

Vulcan rocketed up onto the overhanging metal beams and perched there while the minions rushed across the gantry. The triple barreled cannons began to spin up. Everything moved slowly to Ryuki. The first muzzle flare seemed to last for hours before the barrels rotated. He watched his hands pull back on the controls instinctually backing there was only open air behind him. His body was moving faster than his mind could comprehend and before he could catch up he watched the metal grating of the gantry below him slip away.

In its place was the stark white landscape of the frozen wasteland and above him he could see the raging beasts toppling over the edge in their attempt to catch him. The scaffolding exploded from the impacts of the cannon fire ,taking the few remaining beasts with it. Then from the orange and black flames emerged the Vulcan, its teeth bared and its blood streaming.

Ryuki ignited his boosters , knowing full well that the reactors had reached their operational limits and the risk of overheating was nearly assured. It didn't matter to the Vulcan though, its tongue wagged in anticipation of the savory insides of the Lionheart.

They blazed out from underneath the rising super-freighter , heading towards the escaping frigate. The Vulcan no doubt intended to destroy both the Lionheart and the fleeing ship. Ryuki saw the monster screaming towards him but knew that its actual goal was to intercept the ship. He needed to give them enough time to escape into space and he knew of only one way to do it.

Ryuki pulled the controls back to send his mech in an upward climb and then pushed back down to reverse course . The Vulcan unit speed past him , its mouth jeering and its eyes pointed forward at the frigate. Ryuki activated the lateral thrusters, pushing him into a parallel course to the Vulcan. Together, they formed two contrails , each attempting to move as fast as possible.

The alarms blared and the red indicators now flashed prominently in every display. Integrity of the molten salt pipes had reached a critical level. The strain exerted by the overheating thermal fluids were pushing against the pipe walls causing them to buckle dangerously. Application of repair fluid , a greyish liquid filled with nanomachines and carbon nanotube strands , only slowed the fracturing process. The heat became to pierce through the reactor cores and slowly seep into the Lionheart's core-torso. Its own reactor was slowly losing its cooling systems as the entire mech began to heat up as Ryuki pushed it to the limit. Its armor plates weren't designed to absorb the amount of heat the air friction was producing. The charred black armor began to glow red as portions of the armor began to melt. There wasn't any time left to chase the Vulcan.

He engaged the monster with the head mounted heavy machine , firing off a torrent of armor piercing rounds into the sky. The Vulcan was smart enough to engage in evasive maneuvers, swerving and banking left and right as it attempted to overwhelm the auto-targeting systems. Its arms extended out from the shoulder joints , freeing them to turn backwards and aim its cannons at Ryuki. It weaved in and out from the stream of depleted uranium shells as the tracers whizzed past it so close that the heat of the rounds left gash marks where the metallic surface of the armor was softest. Its red eyes burned intensely as the rest of its body turned into a red hot comet.

The barrels of its chain guns spun up in unison before unloading a hail of fire. The muzzle blasts obscured its body and the direction its cannons pointed leaving Ryuki to guess where it was aiming. The targeting computers traced every round and calculated the expected trajectories and simulated the direction the cannons were facing. This allowed Ryuki to fly blind , relying on his suite of combat computers to guide him through the rain of tracers and shrapnel.

A single round whizzed past the concealing head of the armor pack , causing intense sensory distortions. The visual feed turned blurry and became too difficult to watch. Ryuki moved fast to purge the now worthless armored head to reveal the Lionheart's mane from underneath it. The sensors on the Lionheart took over and began to feed the combat data once again but the momentary loss of situational awareness had allowed the Vulcan to return to its chase.

The thermal levels of the reactors had reached the red line, everything the armor packs had absorbed so much heat that they could no longer discharge the extra energy into the heat sinks. It was only a matter of time before the core melted down and destroyed the Lionheart.

The autocannons mounted on each arm of the Lionheart were still loaded with a few problem, the fire rate and the muzzle velocity weren't enough to hit such a fast moving target. They were no use if he couldn't close in on Vulcan.

A few swipes of a floating screen gave him access to the fuse and warhead settings for the autocannon. If he couldn't hit it then the best he could do is impede it with airbursting shells. The flare launchers were still operational and thankfully the munitions were phosphorus missiles, designed to reach imitate hypersonic rockets to thwart counter-missile batteries.

The fuse settings were changed to proximity detonation, with a range of twenty meters. While this would have worked on an agile target, the Vulcan was moving too fast for shrapnel to do its work. The explosives used inside the warhead weren't high enough energy to propel the shards of metal fast enough to intercept the red comet.

Flares though obscure view and Ryuki guessed that whatever is piloting the mech isn't as smart as a human at the controls. Panels opened up on the shoulders of his mech revealing several tubes. One by one the flares burst out , speeding past the Vulcan and exploding into brilliant white flowers. The missiles steered the mech away from its flight trajectory. WIth that , Ryuki knew he could fool it to fly right into his autocannons line of fire.

The beast made a sharp turn as the flares burned away at its eyes. Its lateral thrusters spewed out white smoke , pushing it to the side while making it lose speed. Targetting solution was set. The cannons were armed. Each fired two shots , sending four shells up to the blind Vulcan.

One by one the shells exploded , spreading their superheated shells at supersonic velocities. The shards scattered over the entire body of the Vulcan, leaving ever widening tears in its armor until its bleeding core exploded into pile of parts The blooming debris scattered across the sky like tiny rockets racing with plumes of black smoke trailing behind them. Ryuki nearly collided with a large chunk of the torso but remained unharmed as he approached the frigate.

The alarms were now solid. Systems were shutting down to preserve core functionality. Emergency systems came active to prepare for terminal state. What that meant was that the pilots nest was being flooded with nonconductive coolant while the thermal fluids were being evacuated out. There was still one thing left to do though, even if the heat was now a warming his back.

His fist came slamming down on the manual override safety box. Underneath was a switch that needed to be pulled up and then turned before the safety systems would deactivate. The viscosity of the coolant though made everything move slower including his arms. So what should have taken a few seconds was taking dangerously longer. The joints on his suit had become lubricated from the liquid , which meant he could do something not so smart.

He sent a verbal command to his suit. "Deactivate restraints" he said and endured the neon bright warning messages appearing inside his could hear through the vibrating metal the motors changing to a higher RPM, almost sounding as if a blade was grinding against a ceramic block. He knew a misapplication of force would break his shoulder in two but he needed to make the final turn on the override.

His hand moved precisely and deliberately, making a smooth quarter turn of the switch. When the green light on the base of the switch turned red, he pushed the switch back down. With that the warnings stopped and the fluid drained but the heat still radiated through the mech walls, turning a few overhanging bits a dim red. His hardsuit would not last long even if the mech would otherwise.

"Slow down!" he yelled over the radio, hoping someone was listening. "Cap, you're late man, hurry up" Dizzy yelled back. "Give me a second, I need to do something" , he replied as he slowed the mech down to reverse his facing. The frigate slowed until it was flying above Ryuki with its cargo bay doors wide open to catch him.

With two missiles left he decided to make a lasting impression on the surface of Glacius. The missile silo slammed down another rocket motor while the warhead dispenser quickly screwed in the warhead. The launch rails flipped over his shoulder so that it could launch straight down at the super-freighter slowly ascending. He could see on its surface a gathering of mechs waiting to reach them.

A burst of light and smoke erupted from the rocket motor's tail. The missile raced out from the rail down towards the ship , taking a swirling path to avoid the gunfire flying up from the ship. Flaps on its body opened up giving it pitch and yaw control. Still more panels opened, this time by blowing off the body. The ventral and dorsal thrusters gave it lateral movement, making the missile seem to fly much like a bee would.

Before the warhead could separate from the motor, Ryuki fired off the last nuke for good measure. "Just to be sure" he yelled over the radio as his team watch from the cargo hold. The second missile now parted the widening plume of rocket exhaust left by its brother. Down they went, in formation through the flak and explosions.

Their flight computers determined it was best to launch the warheads simultaneously, either for a tactical advantage or to make a great light show. The warheads detached , now free falling with their own control fins.

Before long, the warheads separated and the nuclear devices speed into the freighter. A total of eight streaked downward but three were destroyed moments after they had launched. The other five hurtled downward. Ryuki wondered how many duds were among them considering how old all the equipment seemed to be.

As the missiles flew , Ryuki began the process to purge the armor from his mech. One by one , the conformal packs and armor plates dropped away in a cloud of smoke as tiny explosive charges separated them from their host. Like meteors breaking up in the atmosphere, they fell apart as the microexplosives erupted over their surfaces and joints.

Free from the overheating coffin, Ryuki boosted up into the cargo hold with ease. "Im in!" he yelled on the radio which prompted Dizzy to close the bay off. A split second moment, when the bay door was almost sealed shut and the nuclear bombs exploded flooded the bay for a brief moment with a brilliant white light that would have fried anything not inside armor or radiation resistant hull.

"So, mission accomplished" Barry called out from his mech over its loud speaker.


End file.
